


Behind Bars (On The Other Side Remix)

by flawedamythyst



Category: Marvel
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Prison, The Raft Prison (Marvel), Wakanda (Marvel), happy ever after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:07:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24813544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: If Clint had known that hooking up with his cellmate would lead to escaping prison, making it all the way to Wakanda without being recaptured, and convincing King T'Challa and Captain America to let him stay once he got there, then he'd...well, he'd probably still have kissed the guy. Bucky was smoking hot, after all.Clint just really hopes he doesn't get mad when he finds out that Clint's been telling everyone he's Bucky boyfriend.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 72
Kudos: 571
Collections: Winterhawk Remix 2020





	Behind Bars (On The Other Side Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Behind Bars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15212288) by [sara_holmes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_holmes/pseuds/sara_holmes). 



> There is a brief mention of coercive relationships part way through, but only hypothetically.
> 
> Thanks to the two usual suspects for all their help, and to Sara Holmes for being involved with the Remix Challenge. I had a lot of fun playing with your 'verse.

Being with Bucky still felt new enough that waking up to the soft feel of him kissing the back of Clint’s neck was unexpected. Or maybe Clint had just been in prison long enough to stop expecting nice things and it was taking a while to readjust now he had Bucky, who was a very nice thing. Maybe even the best thing.

Clint blinked his eyes open in the dim light that filtered through the unsubtle sheet they’d hung over the end of the bunk.

“Rollcall’s soon,” he murmured, tightening his hand over Bucky’s where it was wrapped around his waist, holding him close into the curve of Bucky’s body. The first time they’d lain like this, Clint had been worried that lying on the stump that was all that remained of his metal arm would be uncomfortable for Bucky, but he’d never once complained. Instead, he was usually the instigator on pulling Clint against his chest like this, so Clint had figured it didn’t bother him. Given how Bucky closed off became when it got mentioned, he hadn’t been about to ask him about it.

“Fuck ‘em,” muttered Bucky, low enough that Clint wouldn’t have caught it if Bucky’s mouth wasn’t right next to his ear. He reached out to grope for where he’d dumped his hearing aids on the floor before nodding off last night.

“Come on,” he said, nudging back with his elbow. “Guards already treat us like enough shit, and if the others work this out…”

Bucky snorted, lifting his head away to allow Clint to fit his aids in his ears before curling back in just as close. “Fuck ‘em,” he repeated. “They’re all too scared of me to say jack shit. Perk of being the Winter Soldier.”

Clint rolled his eyes but didn’t bother disputing it, not when they both knew that hanging up the sheet in the first place had been as good as a banner when it came to giving away what was going on between them now.

Besides, he didn’t really want to argue with Bucky, not today. He pressed his ass back into Bucky’s hips, where he could feel the swell of an erection forming. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes then.” 

After more years than he liked to think about in the Raft, Clint knew the rhythms of life here in his bones. Rollcall, then breakfast in their cells, then an hour of waiting around for the cells to be unlocked. Mostly Clint left going to the showers until the afternoon to avoid the early rush on them but he could feel come flaking off his thighs, and it was possible more was about to be added, so he was planning to hustle off there as soon as possible.

Besides, he had plans for this afternoon.

“Ten minutes is plenty of time,” muttered Bucky, sliding his hand from Clint’s hip to wrap around his cock, and grinding harder against his ass. “Ah, fuck.”

Clint pushed back into the movement of Bucky’s hips and then forward into his hand, closing his eyes and thinking about getting to do this with Bucky anywhere other than here, somewhere with windows and daylight and no bars or locked doors. Bucky’s breath was coming loud and fast in his ear, his body pressed even closer all along Clint’s back as he worked his cock fast and hard.

One day, they’d get to take their time, without worrying about prison guards or being overheard or hanging a damn sheet up for privacy. They’d be somewhere open and free, filled with sunlight and all their own to relax in, where Clint wouldn’t have to bite down on his lip to keep all the noises he wanted to make choked down and- Oh, fuck, how did Bucky’s hand always feel so good?

Bucky squeezed tighter at Clint’s cock, letting out a bitten off swear word as he thrust harder against Clint’s ass. He shifted his grip just enough to send a shudder of sensation through Clint, and then Clint was coming, pressing his face into the pillow to muffle himself.

Bucky changed his grip to pull Clint tighter back against his body, thrusting another couple of times before he came as well, grunting into the back of Clint’s neck. Clint felt a flood of new stickiness over his ass and winced to himself.

“You know, the thing they never tell you about prison sex is how damn classy it is,” he said.

Bucky snorted a laugh, then rolled back as much as was possible in the tiny bunk. “Worth it though,” he said. “That was a better start to the day than anything else that ever happens in here.”

“Well, that’s true,” acknowledged Clint, wriggling around to press a quick kiss to Bucky’s mouth, because some things were important even if it did leave him balancing right on the edge of the bunk. “Morning.”

Bucky grinned back at him and that was maybe the first thing that had reeled Clint in, back when he’d still been kinda wary of sharing a cell with the Winter Soldier; just how easy and carefree Bucky’s smile was on the very rare occasions he let it out. 

“Morning,” said Bucky, and returned Clint’s kiss. “Now, get out of my bed and make it look like you slept in your bunk before breakfast gets here.”

“Whatever happened to savouring the afterglow?” asked Clint, stroking a hand over Bucky’s back.

Bucky snorted, then gave him a gentle shove, which was all that was needed to push Clint out of the bunk onto the ground. “Maybe later.”

Clint scowled at him, standing up and making a show of rubbing his hip where he’d hit the floor. “Asshole.”

Bucky gave him an unrepentant grin. “Yeah,” he agreed, snuggling down into his blankets in a particularly obnoxious way.

Clint muttered further insults, but did climb the ladder up to his own bunk, getting under the blankets so that when the cell lights all blazed on a moment later and the guards started going around yelling, “Rollcall!” and hitting the bars with their sticks, he could sit up and rub sleepily at his face like he’d been there the whole night. Probably no one was fooled, but it was the thought that counted, right?

****

Once they’d been fed the revolting mess that passed as breakfast, Clint was all ready for a sprint to the showers once their door unlocked with a heavy thunk. He darted around the other inmates who had a similar goal and managed to jump into one of the handful of cubicles straight away.

When he came out, there was a line of glowering bad guys scowling at him for taking his sweet time, but he’d built up enough of a reputation for them not to get aggressive, not this time. 

A lot of the other inmates in the secure wing of the Raft were Hydra agents and they all knew he’d been with SHIELD, and not just because he’d been undermining it from the inside like too many of them had been. That meant there was a certain amount of tension in the air whenever Clint wandered out of his cell that often lead to a beatdown if the guards took their eyes off the situation. Or an attempted beatdown; Clint was more than capable of taking on most of those assholes.

He was safe enough right now because the last time he’d wiped the floor with a bunch of guys who had attacked him had been recently enough for people to remember just how many of those guys had ended up in medical. And that none of them had been him.

It definitely helped that everyone knew he was best pals with Bucky now. Everyone here knew enough of the Winter Soldier’s reputation not to want to poke that bear with a stick, and that was without considering the incident a few months ago that had ended up with seven guys in the medical unit, four in solitary, and the whole bathroom being refurbished. No one was going to risk getting on Bucky’s bad side after that.

All in all, Clint felt pretty good about just sauntering past the guys waiting for the showers with a smug grin, almost daring them to go for it. All he got in response were glares.

That was a shame, he’d liked to have given some of them some bruises to remember him by.

When Clint got into the main area of the block, Bucky was sat at one of the tables, playing cards with Pietro and clearly trying not to lose his shit over the kid’s incessant chatter. 

Even when the inmates weren’t on lockdown in their cells, there wasn’t a lot of space for them to spread out into. Apart from the short corridor the bathroom was down, there was only the wide semi-circle of space in front of the cells, which was overlooked by the main security desk. It had a few tables with benches welded to the floor, a counter where the meals were served from, and not much else.

It was still more than Clint had had when he’d first been brought here, the lone occupant of the block. He’d been kept on lockdown 23 hours a day back then.

“Hey grumpy bear,” said Clint as he slipped into the seat next to Bucky. “Hey squirt.”

“Hey Daddy,” said Pietro, because he was a little shit. 

Pietro had arrived in the prison about a year after the main influx of Hydra agents who had been imprisoned after the fall of SHIELD. He’d been charged with all the normal things: membership of a terrorist organisation, being complicit in various acts of terrorism, and conspiracy to cause murder and mayhem in the pursuit of changing the world order in Hydra’s favour. It had only been the relative shortness of his sentence that had really made him stand out.

Even with that, Clint had assumed he was just another kid who had been brainwashed by Hydra into believing their bullshit and letting himself be experimented on. God knew there were enough enhanced assholes in the place, all of them obvious from the dampening cuffs they were made to wear.

It had taken Pietro being targeted by the biggest Hydra assholes for Clint to realise he wasn’t actually one of them, and that he finally had a fellow inmate who wasn’t psychotic, a neo-Nazi, or both. He’d still been puzzling that one out when he’d found himself stepping in to protect Pietro from a kicking. Pietro had immediately taken it as a sign that he should latch himself onto Clint, following him around like a duckling until Clint had given in and started replying to some of his endless chatter. If he’d known that Pietro would use that as an excuse to start calling him ‘Daddy’ in a pointed attempt to get the other inmates to think they’d have to face Clint if they messed with Pietro, he’d probably have gone on ignoring the kid forever.

No, he wouldn’t. He was too much of a sucker for strays and Pietro would have got into too much trouble without Clint’s reputation protecting him.

Pietro had told Clint all about his childhood and his parents’ deaths, being taken in by Strucker and his group, then about everything that had happened with Ultron before he and his sister had changed their allegiances to the Avengers. Clint had had to grit his teeth as Pietro merrily told him all about fighting in Sokovia with them, because Clint couldn’t help thinking he should have been there. He should have been part of that team, like he had been in New York.

Pietro’s cheerful tone only really dipped when he told Clint about being shot by one of Ultron’s robots, and how he’d been arrested while still in the hospital and whisked off to the Raft before anyone could say anything about it. Clint had a lot of sympathy for how that would have felt, being treated like a criminal when he’d worked so hard to make up for the damage he’d done.

Of course, then Pietro had talked about Captain America speaking at his trial to defend him, and how he and Tony Stark between them had managed to talk Pietro’s sentence down to only a couple of years, and Clint had had to clench his jaw against all the walled up anger at how differently his own trial had gone.

Pietro wouldn’t be inside the Raft much longer now. These days, he didn’t really need Clint any more anyway, not now everyone knew he was part of the Winter Soldier’s circle. Clint could trust that he’d be okay without Clint around to keep an eye on him.

And Bucky would be out not long after Pietro, and Clint would be back to being the only decent fucker in the place again.

He wasn’t going to let that happen.

Pietro and Bucky finished their hand and Bucky started to awkwardly collect up the cards, one-handed. He nudged Clint’s foot. “You wanna be dealt in?”

Clint shifted so he was in a better position to watch the guard rotations. “Sure,” he said, because he’d always been good at multitasking and he wasn’t about to turn up his nose at getting to hang out with the only two friends he’d had in the last few years. Whether or not his plans for the afternoon were successful, he had no idea when he’d be in a position to have friends again.

They played cards for a while, Pietro doing his best to cheat without either of them noticing but getting caught every time.

The new guard shift came through the door and Clint noted with satisfaction that Connors was on, and was already stifling a yawn. He’d been moonlighting at his second gig as a club bouncer last night then, excellent. Just as Clint had planned.

“Hey, your go,” said Bucky, nudging him, and Clint turned his attention back to the game.

When Clint had first been brought to The Raft, wearing more manacles than he felt were really necessary given how exhausted he was after the Battle of New York, he’d been locked in a cell and left to rot for a day or two while everyone tried to work out what to do with him. From what he’d been able to work out, half of SHIELD hadn’t really believed that he’d been brainwashed by Loki when he’d attacked the helicarrier, and the other half hadn’t cared. They’d just wanted their pound of flesh.

Which had made sense a couple of years later when it turned out they’d mostly been Hydra agents all along. Back then, though, it had felt more like Clint had been abandoned by everyone he’d thought cared about him. In Loki’s absence he’d been made into a scapegoat for the whole awful mess. Murder and mayhem and trying to take over the world, all that, all laid at his door because Loki had been whisked off out of everyone’s reach. 

For a while they’d even been debating the death penalty.

Clint had been exhausted and miserable back then, crushed by the guilt and abandoned by his friends. He probably wouldn’t have done a whole lot to stop them from executing him.

They’d set up a closed court, marched him in all chained up like Hannibal Lecter and read out his crimes while the lawyer they’d provided for him stared down at his shoes and didn’t say a whole lot. It should have felt like a relief when they sentenced him to fifteen life sentences instead of death, but by then he’d just been numb to the whole thing. Numb and hollowed out.

It had taken him a few months afterwards to pull himself back together and reflect that it hadn’t exactly felt like the ‘truth, justice and the American way’ bullshit that SHIELD had always spouted. Apparently that wasn’t for a guy who had been brainwashed by an alien god and forced to kill his colleagues.

For a good few months he’d been alone in this block of the Raft, trapped in his cell and taken out for only an hour every day to use the bathroom and walk around the empty space for a few circuits.

After a while, a few other prisoners had started to trickle in. Enhanced guys that no other prison could hold, maniacs with doomsday plans who the Avengers had taken down, and just generally guys no one knew what else to do with. Pretty much all of them hated Clint, which was fair because Clint hated all of them. The growing population had meant changes in the way the block was run; more time out of his cell and new facilities like another bathroom being opened up, but it had only been when Pietro had turned up that Clint had found someone he could stomach having a conversation with.

Pietro gave Clint a look that glittered with amusement. “Is Daddy tired?” he asked innocently. “Something keeping Daddy _up_ at night?” He gave Bucky a not-so-subtle look.

“You got me,” said Clint, playing a card. “I lay awake the whole night, just imagining wringing your neck.”

“Ah, you love me really,” said Pietro cheerfully, then added something in Sokovian that made Bucky snort.

And really, it was just horribly unfair that they both knew a language Clint didn’t. He’d graciously taken them under his wing when they’d turned up, first Pietro and then, a lot more recently, Bucky, and they repaid him by talking shit about him behind his back. How was that fair?

“Fuck you guys,” he said, then repeated it in Italian, just to prove they weren’t the only ones who were multilingual.

Except, of course, Bucky knew Italian as well. “ _I’d prefer it if you just fucked me,_ ” he said in it, giving Clint the self-satisfied smirk that Clint always wanted to kiss off his face.

Not a good idea when they were right out in front of most of the inmates and a handful of guards, so Clint settled for rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to the game.

After the Avengers had uncovered Hydra riddled all through SHIELD, the block had begun to get pretty full. The guards had put bunks in every cell to double up the capacity as more and more of Hydra’s ranks got moved in, the ones too hardcore to be put in a regular prison. Clint had kept his head down and tried not to lose his shit with rage as half the guys who had condemned him to spend his whole life locked up turned up on his side of the bars, most of them with shorter sentences than him after trials that a human rights lawyer could look at without weeping.

It made sense, of course. Any justice system that Captain America was involved in was going to be fairer than one motivated by revenge and mostly run by Hydra agents.

Clint spent a lot of time pressing down the rage that Captain America hadn’t decided to step in when he’d been on trial. There wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it, after all. Not while he was locked up with no phone or visiting privileges.

He flicked his eyes over towards where Connors had settled in at the security desk with his head resting on his fist, eyelids drooping, and smiled to himself. He wasn’t going to be locked up for much longer though, not while everything kept going according to his plans.

The main doors clanged open as the trollies with the lunch trays were pushed through and everyone turned to look. Lunch was the one meal a day they were allowed to eat outside of their cells, although they did get put back in lockdown afterwards for what Clint always thought of as naptime.

“Hey, you gonna bring me a tray?” Bucky asked Clint.

Clint snorted. “Fuck no,” he said, then looked at Pietro. “Hey, kid, how about you make yourself useful?”

“Nope,” said Pietro, hopping up to his feet and darting off to grab his own lunch, weaving around the rest of the inmates like a pro. Even wearing the powers-dampening cuff that all the enhanced guys had to wear, he still moved faster than Clint’s tired old bones could imagine.

Clint watched him grab one single tray and give them both a shit-eating grin before disappearing off towards his cell, then glanced at Bucky. “So much for respecting your elders.”

“You know, I’m considerably older than you,” said Bucky, raising his eyebrows. “And it’s not like I can carry two trays at once,” he added, waving his one hand vaguely in the air.

Clint rolled his eyes, but stood up. Given his afternoon plans, the ones Bucky had no idea about and would probably be furious about when he found out, it seemed like the least Clint could do.

Of course, that didn’t stop Clint from trying to take Bucky’s juicebox as a fee when he sat back down again. Bucky just rapped his knuckles with his spoon until he let go of it, ignoring the pout Clint gave him in return.

****

Clint did have a nap during the post-lunch lockdown, but he had it in Bucky’s bunk, curled up around him and half in his lap as Bucky rested the book he was reading on Clint’s back. Clint slept like a baby, which was good given that if all went according to plan he wouldn’t have much of a chance tonight.

Plus it gave him a final long snuggle with Bucky to tide him over until the next time he saw him.

If there was a next time.

No, there would be. Clint’s plan would work. He’d get everything he wanted, freedom and Bucky both.

“Hey,” said Bucky softly, setting his book down so he could stroke his hand over Clint’s hair and down his back. “You awake?”

Clint gave a half-hearted mumble and snuggled in tighter, arms wrapped around Bucky’s waist and his face pressed into his abs.

Bucky chuckled quietly. “You’re kinda sweet like this,” he said, stroking through Clint’s hair again. “Almost like you’re not a raging asshole most of the time.”

Clint lightly bit him for that, teeth pressing down through Bucky’s shirt to the skin below.

“Ow! Jesus,” muttered Bucky, tugging on Clint’s hair in retaliation. “I take it back, you’re a raging asshole all the time.”

Clint settled back in, content with that analysis of his character.

“Lockdown’s gonna be over soon,” said Bucky. “You coming to the gym?”

The gym was a very recent addition to the routine of the prison. For the two hours between afternoon lockdown and dinner, inmates who hadn’t pissed any guards off in the last week were allowed to line up to visit what was maybe the shittiest gym Clint had ever seen. They got taken in half hour shifts that didn’t give them enough time to do much more than lift a couple of weights before it was time to be escorted back. He and Bucky tried to go every day.

“Nah,” said Clint, sleepily. “Gonna stay here and catch up on my beauty sleep. Some asshole wore me out last night.”

“Aw, sweetheart,” said Bucky, gently, “it’s gonna take more than a couple of naps for you to get close to beauty.”

Clint bit him again for that one, so Bucky pulled him back by his hair and the ensuing wrestling match ended with them both on the floor, making out.

It felt like a pretty good way to say goodbye.

****

Bucky asked Clint again to go with him before he headed off to the gym. Clint just snuggled further into the bed and shook his head, but he did keep his eyes open so he could get a last look as Bucky rolled his eyes and then headed off, Pietro bounding out of his cell to tag along with him as he went.

Clint watched until they were out of sight, then glanced across at where Connors was shuffling out of the security booth and heading to watch the exit to the medical unit. He was replaced by Guillermo, who was already pulling a textbook out and propping it against the monitor. His final exam for night school was tonight; he wouldn’t be paying attention to anything else. The stars had all aligned.

Clint pressed his face into Bucky’s pillow for one last breath of his smell, then got up, keeping things casual as he pulled on his shoes, then fumbled the handful of items he’d hidden away over the last couple of months into his pocket. Time to go.

****

Two weeks later, Clint was on another continent, had a different hair colour, was wearing clothes that weren’t glorified pyjamas for the first time in most of a decade, and missed Bucky like he’d had a limb cut off.

Okay, maybe that was an asshole comparison given the shattered mess of an arm that Bucky kept covered over as much as he could. Still, Clint really fucking missed him and he was very aware that if the next bit of his plan didn’t work out right, he was going to go on missing him for a long time.

He hefted the backpack full of shit he’d stolen along the way higher on his back and adjusted his hat, as if changing the angle of the brim would somehow solve the problem of the scorching hot African sun heating up his pasty white Iowan skin. In the distance, two tall guys with what looked like very heavy staffs were staring at him while goats wandered around them. Clint threw on a cheerful grin and headed for them.

“Hey!” he called as soon as he was close enough. They stared blankly back. “Hey, either of you speak English?”

The men just stared harder. They were wearing what looked like heavy blankets over their shoulders, and just looking at them made Clint feel even hotter.

“Okay,” he said, after a moment of awkward silence, “Parlate l'italiano?”

The silence continued. Clint sighed, considered the likelihood of ASL and decided not to bother. The deaf community in this region were far more likely to use Kenyan sign language, which Clint didn’t know at all. “Vy govorite po-russki?” he tried instead.

The stares, if anything, grew blanker.

Damn, he was going to have to dig deeper into the languages he really didn’t know so well. “Uh, hablas español?” he tried. Still nothing. “Parlez vous francais?”

One of them shifted his weight in a meaningful way, bringing his staff down heavily onto the ground in front of him.

Clint sighed. “Okay, okay, hang on,” he said, searching through his memory and wondering why the hell he’d never really picked up any African languages. Just because 90% of his missions had been in north America or Europe… “Okay,” he said, giving up on proper communication. He jabbed a finger down at the ground. “Wakanda?” he asked.

The men followed his finger down to where he’d pointed at a pile of goat droppings. They looked up again with glares.

“No, no, no,” said Clint quickly, holding his hands up. “I didn’t mean- I’m sure it’s a great place, heard a lot of good things, I just want to know if I’m in it yet, or if I got turned around, there were some very confusing hills, okay? Just, please. Is this Wakanda?” This time he settled for waving a hand in the air. “Wakanda?” he tried again.

There was a beat of silence, then they both picked their sticks up and jabbed them at him in perfect unison, making him stumble backwards. One of them yelled something in an African language Clint didn’t even recognise, let alone speak a word of.

“Aw, no,” he said, backing up and holding his hands in front of him. “Please, I’m not a threat. No danger, net opasnosti, nessun pericolo, uh, no hay pelig-something, shit, peligi? Something like that, I swear, I’m not-”

They stepped forward in unison and jabbed their staffs at him again. He tried another step backwards, fell over a goat, and landed on his ass.

“Ow fuck,” he muttered. “Okay, okay, please,” he said, holding his hands up. “King T’Challa. He has friends staying, yes? Steve Rogers? I need to talk to him. Steve Rogers,” he repeated slower because the men had paused in place, although they didn’t look any less eager to beat him up. “Captain America?” he added, then searched his memory for the other names Bucky had mentioned in passing, or that he’d read about on his way here. “And, uh, Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff, those guys. Scott...shit. Scott something, can’t remember. Please, I need to talk to them.”

The men glanced at each other again, then straightened up, dropping their sticks back to the ground. “Will they want to speak to you?” asked one of them in, of course, perfect English, only lightly accented.

Clint shrugged. “I hope so,” he said. “Tell Captain America it’s about Bucky Barnes.”

Both of their shoulders slumped. “Of course,” said the same guy, now sounding very tired. “I will contact the palace,” he said, then glanced at his friend, who gave him a little nod, as if to say that he’d watch the crazy guy for a bit.

The first guy headed off a few paces, presumably to call someone although Clint couldn’t see a mobile. Did they even get signal out here? The other guy leaned on his stick, looking down at Clint with a vaguely amused expression.

Clint just stayed right where he was on his ass, because he had a feeling standing up wasn’t going to work out so great for him right now.

“It’s ‘peligro’,” said the guy, helpfully. “No hay peligro.”

Clint managed a smile. “Thanks.”

It only took the first guy a couple of minutes to call the palace, which seemed kinda quick to Clint, given all the hoops he’d assume you’d have to jump through to actually be allowed to talk to someone who’d get a message to a king. He started to wonder if they hadn’t just contacted the nearest border patrol instead.

Fuck, if he ended up back in a jail, he was going to lose it.

A goat wandered closer, taking an interest in him, then leaned in to sniff at his shirt.

“Uh,” said Clint, glancing at the two men, who just gave him smug grins. “Is it-” He tried to gently fend the goat off, which appeared to only interest it more. It moved in closer and, wow, Clint really wished he wasn’t sitting so his head was at goat height right now.

The goat nosed at his hat and he had another go at shooing it away. One of the men was openly sniggering at him now so it didn’t look like he was getting any help from that quarter.

“Hey, there’s a good goat,” said Clint, carefully trying to nudge it backwards. “Nice goat, just maybe go somewhere else for now, I’m not interesting at all, I prom-”

The goat leaned in, took a solid grip on his hat with its teeth, and bit a huge wedge out of the brim. It let out a triumphant bleat and skipped away while the two men properly cracked up, cackling so loudly they actually bent over with laughter, clinging on to their sticks for support.

Clint sighed. “And yet, this is still better than how I feared this would go,” he said, adjusting his hat in an attempt to use the remnants of the brim to block the sun.

There was a shimmer in the sky above the men’s heads and Clint glanced up to see some kind of very sleek aircraft appear out of nowhere, moving fast. It came right down in the field next to them, landing even more smoothly than the quinjets Clint had flown back when he was with SHIELD. 

Holy shit, Bucky had said he thought there was more to Wakanda than met the eye, based on his run-ins with King T’Challa, but Clint hadn’t thought for a moment that that meant they had access to this kind of sci-fi shit. Or had he been behind bars so long that technology had moved on a few steps? No, he hadn’t seen anything close to that in any of the other places he’d passed through on his way there.

The craft’s door opened and the familiar figure of Captain America strode out, followed by a guy Clint didn’t know but who was probably Sam Wilson. There were also two terrifying-looking women with spears.

“Hawkeye!” Cap greeted him from a distance, and Clint stood up, trying to dust some of the dirt off his clothes. There didn’t seem much he could do about his hat right now.

Right, showtime. He really needed to win Cap over, however he could. It didn’t matter that the guy had let him be taken off and locked up when Clint had thought they were part of the same team. He had to get the guy on side, or his chances of ever seeing Bucky ever again would be almost zero.

He tamped down as hard as he could on all his rage over how things and gone and pinned on a grin. “Hi Cap,” he said, giving him a little wave. “Long time no see, huh?”

Cap stopped in front of him and gave him a curt nod. “They said you mentioned Bucky,” he said.

“Yep,” agreed Clint. “We were in prison together.” He glanced at the guy behind Cap and gave him a nod. “Sam Wilson, right? I’m Clint Barton.”

He held out a hand, but Sam didn’t get a chance to respond.

“Prison?” asked Cap, frowning deeper. “I thought you were retired?”

Clint stared at him. “What?” he asked, letting his hand drop. “Retired?” 

He took a moment to picture what that might have been like. “Fuck, that woulda been nice. Get to step away from the whole nasty business of international espionage, go become something easy and relaxing, maybe get a farm or some shit… Yeah, I coulda gone with that.” He shook his head, knocking away the images. “No, I’ve been locked up in the Raft since they arrested me after the Battle of New York. Did you think my sentence was already up?”

After the Avengers had all gathered to made sure that Loki was safely packed off back to Asgard, Clint had gone back to his room in SHIELD barracks. He hadn’t even managed to take his jacket off before a Strike squad turned up and arrested him, marching him off to the Raft and ignoring all his protests.

Cap was staring at him with a slow-dawning horror. “SHIELD said you retired. They said the thing with Loki was all a bit much so you’d quit, taken on a new identity and disappeared.”

Clint felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Why hadn’t he consider that they might not have actually told the other Avengers, especially once he knew Hydra was involved? Fuck, probably the only people who had known about Clint being locked up at all had been Hydra double-agents, and by the time they’d all been unmasked, he’d been locked up long enough to be forgotten about.

All the complicated emotions he’d been repressing as hard as he could, emotions about fighting in a team that included Captain America and Tony Stark and then being left to rot by all of them, surged up into his throat, tasting like bile.

He hadn’t been abandoned by his friends.

Fuck.

“Natasha was pissed you didn’t say goodbye,” added Cap.

Clint pulled in a sharp breath, pressing a hand over his face for a moment as he tried to settle his emotions.

Oh god, she really would have been absolutely furious. She’d have looked all over so she could yell at him, but in all the wrong places. There was no way she’d have thought to check the Raft. Clint dropped his head, trying to hide how much he wanted to scream or hit something. Years of his life, locked up in a metal cage underwater, and no one had even known. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, choking back a sob he really didn’t want to let out in front of Captain America. “Fucking Hydra assholes.” 

“I’m so sorry, Clint. I had no idea anything had happened,” said Cap, and Clint became aware of his audience. This wasn’t the time for this.

He took a deep breath and pushed as much of the emotion back down as he could, for him to deal with later, or maybe just keep ignoring in the hopes it would go away. He had a lot of practice at that, at least. 

He raised his head and looked Cap in the eye, vaguely surprised to find he was actually shorter than him. It seemed like Captain America should tower over all other men, somehow.

“I was arrested after we saw Thor and Loki off,” he said. “They charged me with murder, terrorism, treason, a whole bunch of other stuff, then sentenced me to fifteen life sentences.”

Cap looked genuinely shocked and his jaw clenched with rage. Fuck, he really hadn’t known. 

“That doesn’t seem very legal,” said Wilson, frowning. “Weren’t you brainwashed?”

“Fucking Hydra,” snapped Cap, and, wow, Clint hadn’t realised he swore. That hadn’t been in the comic books. Clint glanced at Wilson, but he didn’t seem surprised. 

“Remember the files Natasha found?” Cap asked Wilson. “About them trying to take out all the high-level SHIELD agents they couldn’t turn, and that’s why she got the mission in Odessa?”

“The one where she got shot?” asked Clint, because he remembered just how pissed she been after that mission very clearly. He connected a few more dots. “By the Winter Soldier, who they controlled. Shit, they deliberately sent her on a mission that would pitch her against him. She was meant to die.”

Cap nodded. “And then they got you locked up without any of your friends knowing about it. I’m assuming they wouldn’t have been able to flip you either.”

“Not a chance,” said Clint. His mind was racing, remembering missions when things had gone just slightly wrong and left him in deep shit. An extraction that wasn’t where it was meant to be; the time the Strike team went to the wrong coordinates; intel that had been wrong about just how many bad guys he’d be going up against. He’d made it through all of them, but it had been damn close a couple of times.

And the guys he’d gone back to afterwards, the ones who clapped his shoulder and congratulated him on getting back in one piece, they’d all been quietly hoping he’d just die on the next one.

He took a deep breath. “Fuck, okay, well, that makes the last few years of my life make a lot more sense. Man, I really want to punch some people right now.”

Cap was nodding. “Yeah, I get that,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to punch some fellas for a while. He took a deep breath and fixed his gaze on Clint. “You said you were in the same prison as Bucky. Did you see him much? Did you get to talk to him? How's he doing?”

“Oh yeah,” said Clint, pulling the remains of his hat off and running a hand through his hair as he pulled himself back together so he could focus on the point of having come all the way to Wakanda. Getting to see Bucky again. “I saw a lot of him. We shared a cell.” He considered it for a moment, then shrugged because there was no sense in coming all the way out here looking for help and not playing every card he had. “And, uh, occasionally a bunk. I guess we’re prison boyfriends.”

Cap just stared at him, so Clint transferred his gaze to Wilson, who was giving Cap a careful look, and then back to the two women with spears who both just met his eyes with emotionless gazes.

“Boyfriends?” repeated Cap.

“Yeah,” said Clint. “I’ve got to say, from a couple of things he said about back when you two were kids, I didn’t think that would be that much of a surprise to you.”

Cap blinked, then snorted a laugh. “I guess it’s not. Fuck, I guess he really is getting himself back.” He glanced over at Wilson with a grin. “And I thought being inside would make it harder for him to break past all the Winter Soldier stuff.”

Wilson was still giving him that careful look. “Are you okay with him having found someone else?”

Cap stared at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Sam, I keep telling you. He’s like my brother, it’s not like that with us.”

Clint hadn’t even paused to consider it might be. That would have been awkward. “So, listen, I wondered if you’d mind doing me a favour and letting me join your super-secret gang of international fugitives? I, uh, didn’t exactly leave prison by the front door, if you know what I mean.”

“You escaped,” said Cap, then frowned. “And you left your boyfriend behind.”

Clint shrugged, trying to look casual and not at all like that exact thing had kept him awake for long nights back on the Raft when he was making his plans, listening to Bucky sleep and trying to work out another way to get this to work. “It was a one man trip, and he’s being shipped out here anyway in a few months. I was meant to live my whole life in that prison, before dying there, old and forgotten. Escaping was my only way out.”

“And then you decided to come to Wakanda,” said one of the women, interrupting the conversation to step forward with her spear held in a vaguely threatening way. “Without an invitation?”

Clint eyed her spear and fought the urge to step back from it because he’d probably only fall over another goat. “Um. I didn’t have anywhere else to go?” he tried.

Her eyes narrowed. “We are not a home for waifs and strays,” she said. “We are a sovereign nation with our own problems, one of which is white men coming here and thinking they can take advantage of us.”

“Aw, no,” said Clint. “I don’t- I couldn’t take advantage of anyone right now, I wouldn’t even want to, I just…” His eyes flicked to Cap. “I don’t know where Natasha is,” he said, “and I don’t have any other friends left. I know you don’t know me very well, Cap, but you trusted me to fight at your back once, and I was kinda hoping that any friend of Bucky’s would be a friend of yours? Please?”

Cap was staring at him with a faint frown, then sighed. “It’s not my decision,” he said. “T’Challa has been more than generous letting us stay here but I don’t think we should be inviting other people without discussing it with him.”

“Correct,” said the woman. She lowered her spear. “If you will vouch for this man, Captain Rogers, we will allow him to make his petition to the king in person.”

“Of course,” said Cap, and just like that, Clint was being escorted onto the aircraft, covered in dirt and with only half a hat, to be taken to a king he needed to impress.

Shit.

****

It was a good few months after Bucky had been brought to the Raft and escorted into Clint’s cell, glowering and clenching his one fist like he was thinking about punching his way out, when they finally got around to holding his trial. With all the international interest in the fate of the Winter Soldier, not to mention Captain America somehow making his feelings clear about it even while on the run, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing before they even decided what to charge Bucky with.

They’d kept him in the cells at the courthouse while the trial was going on, so Clint hadn’t see him for the entire long week of it. When Bucky was escorted back again, he looked shell-shocked in a way that could have been very good or very bad.

Well, the best would have been if he’d never walked back into the cell, if he’d just been allowed to go free, but Clint hadn’t been holding out much hope of that one. It didn’t seem like that was how justice worked in America right now.

“Well?” Clint asked, sitting up on his bunk to let his legs dangle.

Bucky turned to stare at him as the guards locked the door behind him. “Ten months,” he said, numbly. “Including time served. So only another five months.”

“Holy shit!” said Clint, swinging down off the bunk so he could crowd in close to Bucky, checking over his shoulder to make sure the guards had disappeared and no one was watching. He reached out for Bucky’s hand, and it was like a dam breaking. All the emotion Bucky had been holding back flooded across his face and he stepped in close to press his face against Clint’s shoulder.

“Stark spoke for me,” he said, sounding just as blind-sided by that as Clint felt, after what Bucky had whispered to him in the middle of the night about exactly what had happened before his capture. “He went through all the brainwashing shit from Hydra’s files, explained how none of it was my choice, and they just waived it all. All the terrorism and the assassinations, everything from before Hydra went down, they just wiped it clean.”

“Oh wow,” said Clint, stroking a hand over Bucky’s hair. It was the cleanest he’d ever felt it; clearly Bucky’s lawyer had managed to talk him into shampoo. “That’s incredible, Bucky.”

It also hurt, because Tony Stark hadn’t spoken for Clint at his trial, and Clint had been just as brainwashed.

This moment wasn’t about him, though. It was about Bucky. Clint had spent years bottling up all his emotions over his trial, he could keep doing so for a few months longer, until Bucky was gone.

The thought was like a gutpunch. Bucky was going to be gone in less than half a year.

“Yeah,” agreed Bucky, putting his arm around Clint to clutch at his shirt, clinging on like he needed help staying upright. “The ten months is just for the shit with Steve. Conspiracy and resisting arrest, crap like that. Wrist-slapping stuff.”

“I’m so pleased for you,” said Clint, through the wave of overwhelming sadness that he was going to be left alone again. Pietro would be out by then as well, and it would just be Clint and the actual Hydra assholes, trapped in here together for the long-haul.

Clint was going to spend his whole life locked up with guys who hated him so much they’d kill him given half a chance.

“And then I’m being extradited to Wakanda,” Bucky added.

The happiness Clint had been feeling for Bucky despite what it meant for him turned cold. “Wakanda?” he repeated. “What the hell? Why?”

Bucky pressed his head tighter against Clint’s shoulder. “They only let go the crimes from before Hydra went down. A lot of folks still think the bomb that killed Wakanda’s king was me, and the new king has been really loud about getting to put me on trial for it.”

“Oh,” said Clint, softly, wondering just what the sentence was for regicide in a nation that was so private that no one was even sure how its justice system worked. “I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

Bucky shook his head, then lifted it to speak right into Clint’s ear, soft and private. “Steve’s in Wakanda,” he said in a voice so hushed Clint’s aids only just made it out. “T’Challa, the new king, he’s sheltering him and his friends. This extradition is just so I can join them. And I think he was pushing it in case I did get a longer sentence, so I wouldn’t just get trapped here.”

Trapped like Clint was.

“Oh,” said Clint, “that’s great, then.” Five months and Bucky would be back with his best buddy, free and happy, while Clint kept rotting away in here. 

He had the ugly thought that it hardly seemed fair when he’d only been brainwashed for three days while Bucky had done bad shit for seventy years, but pushed it away, stamping all the jealousy down as he pulled Bucky into a tighter hug. “I’m real happy for you,” he said.

It had been true as well, despite what it all meant for Clint. He was happy that Bucky wouldn’t be doomed to this hell with no prospect of escape. He cared about the guy, he wanted him to get a chance to be happy, after all the horrible things that had been done to him.

Clint just wished that there was any way he’d get to be a part of that happiness. That just didn’t seem to be how his life went, though.

They’d rigged up the unsubtle privacy sheet and celebrated the only way they really could while locked up. Afterwards, Bucky had lain sprawled across Clint’s chest, idly tracing patterns over his skin. Clint had his arm looped around Bucky’s waist, stroking up and down over his spine as he’d stared up at the ceiling. 

He’d found himself running through everything he knew about the security of the Raft, everything he’d seen since those very first days when he’d been the only one there, everything he’d picked up about the guards, every little chink in the walls surrounding them. He’d long had half an idea for a way out, but he’d mostly shelved it after Pietro had arrived, and then definitely after Bucky had walked into his cell, but it had felt like maybe it was time to dust it off.

If Bucky was going to be making a new life in Wakanda, then that was where Clint wanted to be too.

****

Cap sat next to Clint on the aircraft, turning to him before they’d even taken off to ask, “So how is he really?” There was no question who he was talking about.

Clint shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “I mean, he’s locked up with assholes, that’s not great, but he’s pretty much as okay as he could be, I reckon.” He considered for a moment, but nothing else came to mind. “I don’t know what to tell you. He does a lot of reading, plays cards, goes to the gym when he’s allowed, gets stabby if you try to take his juicebox, all the usual prison stuff.”

“He’s not…” started Cap, then broke off helplessly, glancing over at Wilson, who just raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ve been worried that being locked up would be really hard for him, after all Hydra did,” said Cap, after a moment of clearly thinking through exactly what he wanted to say.

Clint considered that. “No more than it is for anyone else,” he said. “Easier maybe, although it could also be the Army that got him used to routines and taking orders from assholes and all that.”

Cap scowled, staring down at the floor as if trying to glare a hole in it, which seemed like a bad idea when they were in the air. “It’s all fucking bullshit,” he muttered stubbornly and, wow, Clint seriously hadn’t figured Captain America would swear so much.

He hadn’t done much swearing during the Battle of New York, which Clint would have thought would be exactly the time when most people would be swearing up a storm. He definitely had been, although he’d kept it off-comms for most of the fight.

Clint took a moment to look Cap over and realised that he’d also lost the stiff, regimented set of his spine and the way all his facial expressions had looked a little painted on. Clearly, the years since then had changed him, made him more like an actual person and less like a cardboard cut-out. He looked far more like a guy called Steve Rogers than the legendary Captain America.

“He’s really looking forward to getting over here,” Clint said, because the way Bucky’s face had relaxed any time he’d mentioned Wakanda had been unmistakable, even if he’d always been really careful not to mention in front of anyone other than Clint that he was expecting anything other than a trial for regicide when he got here.

“I’m looking forward to that as well,” said Steve, then glanced at Clint. “Guess you will be too.”

Clint shrugged. “If I’m allowed to stay,” he said, all too aware that although one of the women had put her spear down to fly the craft, the other had kept hers firmly in her hands. It wasn’t actually pointed at Clint, but it could be with only a flick of her wrist.

“T’Challa is a good man,” said Steve with confidence Clint didn’t feel. He’d always been aware that this was the weakest link of his plan, even more than trying to fit his shoulders through the medical bay waste chute, or being able to hold his breath for long enough to make it to the surface of the Hudson once he got on the outside of the submerged bunker that housed the Raft. 

If T’Challa decided Clint wasn’t welcome in his country, then Clint had nowhere to go and, worse, no way to meet up again with Bucky. He was horribly aware that Bucky wouldn’t come looking for him, not after Clint had just run out on him without a word. He needed to be here when Bucky arrived. He needed to be able to explain.

****

The palace was… well. There was a lot about Wakanda that wasn’t matching up with the kinds of things Clint had seen or read about it before he went to jail, and the palace was maybe top of the list. Or maybe that was the invisible forcefield hiding the capital city; there was just a lot going on that Clint didn’t have time right now to get his head around.

Clint got escorted off to meet the king by the two women, who just glared at Steve when he tried to follow.

“You’ll be okay,” Steve said as he and Sam stayed back. “Just be honest with him.”

Clint managed a nod, wondering what the hell he could say to a king, honest or otherwise, that would persuade him to take in yet another fugitive. T’Challa didn’t owe anything to Clint.

He got taken to what must have been a reception room, although Clint wouldn’t have said before this that he really knew what one of those was. It was mostly empty space with a handful of fancy chairs scattered around the edges and the kinds of decorations on the walls that were meant to impress people.

“Wait here,” said one of the women.

“Do not try to leave this room,” added the other with a glower, and they walked out, pointedly shutting the doors behind them.

Okay then.

Clint wandered over to the window, where he could see a wide view of the palace gardens, a massive statue of a panther, and the capital city off in the distance. He stared at it all for a few minutes, wondering what it would be like if he did actually get to stay here, then turned around to look back at the room.

His eyes were caught by an enormous bow mounted on the wall by the door and he immediately abandoned the window to take a closer look. It seemed like a simple enough design to a casual glance, but Clint wasn’t a casual observer of archery equipment. Both the bow itself, and the quiver of arrows next to it, had among the most elegant and efficient designs he’d ever seen. The arrows were made from some kind of metal that, when he put his hand out to gently touch them, was lighter and stronger than he’d have thought, and still razor sharp on the arrow heads.

“It belonged to King Azzuri,” said a voice behind him, and Clint glanced back to see a guy in a long green and black robe watching him from the doorway. “He wielded it in battle with great success.”

“It’s incredible,” said Clint. “The draw weight must be over 200 pounds. He must have been quite the king.”

“He had the power of the Black Panther,” said the guy, which seemed a pretty colourful way of saying ‘dude was hella strong’.

Clint leaned in closer to the arrows, tucking his hands behind his back to stop himself touching them again now he had an audience. “What kind of metal is this? It’s-”

“Did you come all this way to talk about a bow?” interrupted the guy.

Clint shook his head, still focusing on the arrows. They were so pretty, his fingers itched to be able to shoot them. God, it had been so long since he’d even _seen_ a bow, let alone got to shoot one. “I’m waiting to see the king.”

“Not any more you are not,” said the man, sounding deeply amused. “Now the king is waiting for you to turn your attention to him, instead of to his grandfather’s bow.”

Clint jolted and turned around, actually looking at the guy this time. “King T’Challa?” he asked. 

“Indeed,” said T’Challa, thankfully sounding more amused than insulted. Yet another amused Wakandan, Clint was really making a strong impression everywhere he went here.

“Shit,” said Clint, “I’m so sorry, I assumed I’d be taken through to a throne room or something.”

“We can go there if you want,” said T’Challa, “but I thought this would be more comfortable.”

“Right, yes, of course,” said Clint, finally stepping away from the lovely bow and focussing back on his plan. “Look, uh, your majesty, I was wondering if I could maybe stay?”

Shit, that wasn’t very eloquent at all. What would Natasha say if she was here? She was always the one for getting people to do exactly what she wanted.

God, he missed her.

T’Challa was still smirking at him, but he did come in closer and sat down on a chair, then gestured at another. “Please, sit. You will have to give me reasons to let you stay,” he said. “My security have shown me the alerts from Interpol. They say you are a very dangerous man.”

Clint sat down, sighing. “Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “They say the same thing about Bucky, and Steve Rogers come to that, and you seem happy enough to let both of them stay here.”

“I owe them a debt,” said T’Challa. “I don’t believe I owe you anything.”

“What do you want?” asked Clint, with some desperation. “Listen, please, I know my record looks bad, and whatever they’ve been putting out about me probably looks worse-”

“They say you are a domestic terrorist with scores of deaths and the destruction of a helicarrier on your shoulders,” said T’Challa.

Clint winced. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay, so I had a bad three days. There was this Norse god and a magic cube thing and just…” He gave a helpless shrug. “I couldn’t stop any of it from happening.” He took a deep breath, pushing aside the horrible sensation of guilt and shame with all the skill that years of repression while lying in a prison bunk had given him. “But if Bucky’s not responsible for the people he killed, I’m not responsible for those three days,” he said, wondering if he’d ever manage to believe that. “I don’t see why I should spend the rest of my life locked up. I just want a place to start over fresh and this is where Bucky’s going to be, so…” He gave a helpless shrug.

T’Challa gave him a careful look. “He is your boyfriend,” he said.

Clint shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. He maybe should have been a bit less casual about throwing that word around, given that he and Bucky hadn’t ever really discussed it, but this didn’t seem a good time to downplay their relationship. 

Clint was pretty sure there was more going on between them than just fucking, but he was very aware that hooking up with a guy when you’re trapped together in prison with limited options is pretty different from forming the kind of commitment that meant staying together when you’re on the outside, and are free to do whatever you want.

“There are those amongst my advisors who think I shouldn’t have taken Steve and his friends in. They would not be pleased to hear I had allowed another American to stay.”

“I get that,” said Clint, “I do, but, really, what’s one more, right? I promise not to do anything that might piss off anyone too much.”

T’Challa raised an eyebrow at him. “Like touching a priceless piece of Wakanda’s history?” he asked, eyes flicking over to the bow on the wall.

Clint winced. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Starting from now, I guess.”

T’Challa was very quiet for a few moments, looking at Clint with worryingly perceptive eyes as if he could see into his soul. Clint held still and tried to look trustworthy.

“Some of the Dora Milaje practise with similar bows twice a week,” said T’Challa, after a pause. “If you wish, you can join them.”

Clint‘s eyes widened. “I can stay?”

T’Challa smiled. “You can stay,” he confirmed. “Captain Rogers already gave me a very impassioned speech in your support, I would not want to disappoint him.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” said Clint, slumping back with relief. “Oh wow, that’s...Thanks.” That was the second time Captain America had trusted Clint without really having a lot of reason to, after he’d taken Natasha’s word that Clint could be trusted before the Battle of New York. Clint definitely owed him, like, a beer or something.

“Do not make me regret it,” said T’Challa and Clint nodded slightly too many times. Oh shit, he was getting it, his chance to make Bucky understand why he’d just disappeared on him, and hopefully talk him into extending this thing between them into more than a prison hook-up.

Clint got escorted to a guesthouse in the grounds by one of the terrifying warrior women, who was clearly fuming over T’Challa’s decision but trying not to show it. When they got to the door, she stepped close to Clint, and he realised that she was taller than him. That didn’t happen very often. 

“If you betray his trust in you, or endanger a single Wakandan life, I will make sure you die in great pain,” she promised.

“Um,” said Clint, feeling a cold sweat break out on his back despite the warmth of the evening sun. “That...seems very fair.”

She gave him a final, fierce glare then strode away, leaving him to knock on the door of the house by himself.

****

Steve had clearly told everyone in the guesthouse exactly what was happening, because they were all waiting for him in the lounge, gathered on several large, comfortable looking sofas. The whole house was large and comfortable, but Clint didn’t get to do more than glance around before Steve stood up.

“He let you stay.”

“Yeah,” said Clint, realising that he was sort of gatecrashing what looked like a relatively close-knit group of friends. Wilson was standing at Steve’s shoulder again, in what looked like a familiar stance with his arms crossed. Sprawled out on a sofa watching with interest was Scott...damnit, Clint still couldn’t remember his name. 

And then there was Wanda Maximoff, Pietro’s sister, standing to one side with her hands clenched and a look on her face that was making Clint very aware of all he’d heard and read about her powers.

“Is that okay with you guys?” he said, because it wasn’t like T’Challa had asked them before foisting Clint in the same house as them.

Steve grinned at him. “More than,” he said. “Any boyfriend of Bucky’s,” he added, with a smirk that made Clint wonder just how often he’d been introduced to guys Bucky was sleeping with, back in the day. “We waited on dinner until you got here.”

Clint felt his shoulders slump with relief. “Oh man, that sounds great,” he said. “Uh, could I maybe grab a shower first? It’s kinda been a long journey.”

“Sure looks like it,” said Scott, standing up. “Dude, did you know something's been eating your hat?”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Clint, pulling the hat off and wondering where he could go about getting a new one. He wouldn’t last very well out in the Wakandan sun without some kind of protection, not after several years locked up in an underwater prison had left his skin very pale. He scruffed at his hair, feeling the dust and sweat caked in it and grimaced. “Like I said. Long trip.”

“We’ve set up one of the spare rooms for you,” said Scott, turning towards the stairs. “It’s got an en-suite.”

Clint took a step to follow him, but Wanda strode forward, blocking his path, and he stopped dead. “Pietro Maximoff,” she said, through what sounded like gritted teeth. “He’s being held at the Raft. They said that’s where you were as well.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Clint. “I know Pietro. We used to hang out.”

Her eyes went wide and it looked like every part of her body was tensed up. “How is he? They took his power?”

“They suppressed it,” said Clint, “with a cuff thing.” He vaguely gestured at his wrist, wondering just how volatile her powers were because she looked pretty close to exploding. Everyone else had gone very quiet, he couldn’t help noticing. “But he’s fine. I mean, as fine as you can be in prison. Spent a lot of time bugging me and Bucky, telling jokes, just generally being annoying.”

Her shoulders slumped with relief. “He latched onto a joke and wouldn’t let it go even though it wasn’t funny to start with?”

“Yeah, exactly,” said Clint. “He, uh. He started calling me Daddy the first time I got a couple of assholes to stop hassling him, and just never stopped.”

Scott snorted with amusement and Clint glared at him.

“They were hassling him,” said Wanda, pulling Clint’s attention back to her.

“Well, yeah,” said Clint, “but those guys hassle everyone, and even with the cuff, Pietro’s pretty good at running for safety. And he had me and Bucky both looking after him, and he’s still got Bucky. Everyone’s scared of Bucky, he trashed the whole bathroom the only time he got in a fight.” She let out a quiet sigh, shutting her eyes for a moment with relief, and Clint was reminded that she and Pietro were both still so young. He patted her shoulder as comfortingly as he could manage. “Your brother’s fine,” he said. “And he doesn’t have much longer on his sentence, he’ll be out in no time.”

“And we’ll get him out here when we can,” added Steve, stepping forward to put an arm around Wanda. “It’s all in place. They’ll be watching him when he gets out, but after a couple of months, once they’ve decided he doesn’t know where we are and have lost interest, he’ll quietly disappear and we’ll bring him here. I promise.”

She nodded to him before looking back at Clint. “Thank you.”

Clint just shrugged. “He’s an annoying prick, but he’s a good kid.”

She gave him a faint smile. “He is very annoying,” she agreed, then turned to walk away.

Clint glanced around at the others, settling on Scott. “Shower?” he asked.

Scott nodded. “Come on, man,” he said. “Let’s try and get you smelling less like a goat.”

Clint winced as he followed him up the stairs, bending to take a sniff of his shirt. Oh man, he did smell of goat as well. He’d spoken to a king in a half-eaten hat, smelling like a farmyard, and had somehow still managed to make a good impression. Sometimes he amazed even himself.

****

Living with a bunch of fugitive superheroes was pretty good after a few years in the most secure prison on US soil, followed by two weeks on the run. Clint had a room to himself, one that had both a wide window _and_ a door out onto the balcony that wrapped around the second storey of the house. He could step out whenever he wanted to stare up at the sky, day or night, which was maybe the best thing that had happened to him in years.

Well, except for Bucky, of course. And it was mostly Bucky that he ended up thinking about when he was out there, wondering how he was doing, if the last couple of months of his time at the Raft were dragging by, if Pietro was driving him completely up the wall without Clint there as a buffer between them.

Just how mad he was at Clint for running out on him without a word.

The more time that passed, the heavier the weight in Clint’s stomach got as he found himself imagining all kinds of worst case scenarios for when Bucky arrived in Wakanda. What if he was so angry at Clint that he got him thrown out of Wakanda and he had to go back on the run alone? What if Bucky just laughed when he heard Clint had told everyone they were boyfriends and said it had only been fucking, and prison fucking at that, something he’d only done because he was bored and didn’t have much of a choice of partners?

No. There had been more to it than that. Clint had felt it. They’d never said anything, sure, but they’d talked _around_ it, and some of the stuff they’d done had been miles from what you’d do with a guy you were just banging because you were locked up together. He remembered how softly Bucky had kissed the back of his neck that last morning they’d woken up together, and told himself firmly that you didn’t do that kind of thing if there weren’t feelings involved.

Right?

Clint wasn’t the only one who spent time out on the balcony. Steve’s room was next to his, and he seemed to be out there at odd hours of the night as well, sat with his legs hanging and staring out at the dark jungle with a glare that was clearly aimed at someone miles and miles away.

“Did Bucky tell you what happened to his arm?” Steve asked abruptly, one late night when Clint was cradling a bottle of banana beer, which he was rapidly becoming a fan of.

“Uh,” said Clint, turning his eyes away from the wide splash of stars to look at him. “He fell off a train?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “No, not back then, last year. His metal arm.”

Bucky had whispered the whole story to Clint late one night, as they were pressed together in his bunk, after a nightmare that had nearly ended with Clint being pitched out onto the floor. He’d clung on tighter and tighter to Clint with his remaining arm as the words had spilled out until breathing had become an issue as Clint’s lungs were constricted, but Clint hadn’t said a word to stop him because he’d recognised the desperate flow of words that needed to be let out.

“He mentioned something,” he said, lightly, because that memory was just for him and Bucky.

“Tony did it,” said Steve, sounding like the words were choking him. He pressed his forehead to the balcony railing and let out a long breath. “Fucking Tony. I thought I could trust him.”

Clint didn’t know that much about Tony Stark. He hadn’t been part of Natasha’s mission to investigate him for Fury, although he’d read her report, and the Battle of New York hadn’t been a great time to get to know someone on a personal basis. He could still remember watching the tiny red figure of Iron Man flying into that wormhole though, and thinking that it was a one-way trip. He had a feeling that Tony Stark was the kind of complex guy that made dissecting things like the incident in Siberia into a nightmare of different layers and motivations and underlying stresses, and Clint just didn’t have the patience for that.

“He testified on Bucky’s behalf at his trial,” he said instead.

Steve made a weird, inarticulate noise in his throat, clenching his hands into fists. “Yeah,” he said, shortly.

The silence dragged on for a few minutes and Clint drained the last of his beer, wondering if he could be bothered to get another one. Maybe he should be thinking about going to bed.

“I didn’t get a good look at how bad the damage was,” said Steve. “Is he- Is it okay? Could they do anything for him?”

Well, that seemed an easier minefield than the Tony Stark thing. “I think they tidied it up a bit,” said Clint. “He wears a sort of cover thing over it,” he gestured at his shoulder as if that would give Steve any idea what he was talking about. “He doesn’t like taking it off.” 

Steve let out a long sigh. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Clint wasn’t sure what else he could tell him that Bucky would be happy for him to share. All he could think about was the first time Bucky had let him close. It had been the middle of the night then as well, although they hadn’t been able to see the stars.

****

Clint was woken more by the shaking of the bunk beds than the noise, but once he’d pulled his aids out from under his pillow and fitted them in his ears, it was the horrifying, pained sounds coming from Bucky that made him move. He flipped off the top of the bunk without bothering with the ladder, crouching at Bucky’s side and shaking his shoulder.

“Wake up,” he hissed, hoping like hell no one else in the prison was awake and listening to this. “Bucky, it’s okay. It’s just a dream, wake up.”

Bucky woke up with a start, nearly taking Clint out with a wild blow that Clint moved just quickly enough to dodge before ducking back in and slapping his hand over Bucky’s mouth.

“Shhh, don’t scream. Try not to scream,” he hissed, all too aware of how hard it was to control yourself like that after a nightmare. “If they hear you crying, they’ll think you’re weak,” he added.

Bucky held himself very still, control clinging to every muscle tightly enough to look painful, then nodded.

Clint let out a sigh and let go of him.

“I’m alright,” Bucky said, in blatant disregard of the truth. “Fuck.”

He looked like he was prepared to fake it, so Clint moved away, sitting on the end of the bunk and running a hand over his face.

Bucky let out a long sigh, letting his shoulders relax, then pulled himself semi-upright, propping up the pathetically thin pillow so he could lean back on it. “My arm,” he said, like it was a full sentence, and maybe it was.

“I’m sorry,” said Clint, and reached out to pat at the lump of Bucky’s ankle under the blanket.

Bucky took another deep breath, and then added. “It burns, sometimes. The connections are all jumbled.” He waved vaguely at the metal stump he kept covered at all times. “Mind you,” he said darkly, “before, the weight used to fuck my shoulder up, it would ache along here,” he gestured across at his back. “Guess there’s always going to be some kinda pain from it.”

He put his hand down on his shoulder and Clint could see his fingers pressing into the muscle, as if trying to loosen it up.

“Would a shoulder rub help?” asked Clint without really thinking about it, and then had to take a moment to realise that those words had really just come out of his mouth. Bucky had only been Clint’s bunkmate for a couple of weeks, and he’d made it very clear that he didn’t want to get close to anyone, not when he could sit alone and brood in a devastatingly handsome manner instead, and Clint had been doing his best to honour that.

Bucky was staring at him with a faint frown that could have meant anything from ‘genuinely considering it’ to ‘wondering what the quickest way to murder Clint was’.

“Uh, no homo,” added Clint, as if that was going to help. “Not even prison rules homo.”

Bucky stared at him for a moment longer, then shook his head. “I’ve no idea what that means.”

Clint should probably have expected that. “It means I’m not hitting on you,” he said. “Just seemed like a shoulder rub might help, I’m not looking for a hookup.”

Bucky was silent for another few moments before he nodded. “Okay, that would be good, yeah. Thanks.”

He pulled off his shirt and turned around and wow, Clint had not thought this through. He’d never really spent much time considering how sexy a back could be, but he could already tell that he was going to be thinking about the shift of muscle under Bucky’s skin and the curve of his shoulders, the solid sense of strength in his lines, down to a waist that Clint realised he really wanted to wrap his arms around.

So maybe a little homo.

He pushed all that aside though, because he’d said this was just going to be him helping Bucky out. He focused on working the tension out Bucky’s shoulder muscles and ignored how it felt to smooth his hands over his warm skin. He pressed the knots out, pretending he wasn’t mapping out just how powerful he was, and how close the tiny, choked sounds of relief Bucky made came to the kinds of noises he might make if Clint were doing something entirely different to him.

“Fuck, that feels good,” muttered Bucky.

“Yeah?” asked Clint, trying to keep his tone light. “It’s helping?”

“Oh yeah, so much,” said Bucky, dipping his head to give Clint better access. “Shit, I don’t think anyone’s ever done this for me.”

“Sounds like you were past due, then,” said Clint, and he couldn’t resist shuffling in closer, tucking his knees around Bucky’s hips so he could put more pressure in the places that really needed it.

Bucky let out a quiet sigh and Clint had to shut his eyes for a moment, pressing back the instinctive surge of lust. Shit, had he ever done this to anyone who he hadn’t fucked either before or after?

He couldn’t bring himself to take his hands off Bucky, even after he’d worked his shoulders over about as much as he could, so he started working down his back. He told himself it was good to get the supporting muscles as well, until he ended up at his waist, his fingers resting on Bucky’s waistband as his mind whispered how easy it would be to dip below it and get to touch that ass he’d been staring at whenever he thought he could get away with it.

Instead, he smoothed his hands back up Bucky’s skin to his shoulders, then gave them a gentle pat.

Bucky let out a sigh and leaned back against him. “Fuck, I needed that,” he said in a half-mumble. 

“Glad I could help,” said Clint, holding still beneath Bucky’s weight and trying not to do anything that would make him realise that he’d lolled back against Clint and had his head resting on his shoulder.

Bucky let out a long, deep sigh, then pulled himself upright, turning around to lie back down. “Okay, I reckon I can get some sleep without screaming now.”

“Good,” said Clint, trying out a smile and hoping he didn’t look as blitzed by the whole thing as he felt. He forced himself to get up and start to climb the ladder.

“Hey, uh, Clint?” asked Bucky, and he paused in place.

“Yeah?”

“You said ‘no homo’,” he said, and the phrase sounded really weird in his old-timey Brooklyn accent. “But it’s- Kinda feels like you should know that it’s always gonna be a bit homo with me because, uh…” He went quiet for a moment as Clint clenched tighter at the ladder rungs. “I’m gay,” he said firmly, as if he was forcing the words out. “I get that that was just a friendly massage, and I really appreciate it, but I figured you should know.”

“Okay,” said Clint, hoping he didn’t sound as breathless as he felt. “Me too. Uh, well. I’m bi, but. Yeah. Me too.”

For a split-second he wanted to head back down the ladder and fall back into Bucky’s bunk, but being gay didn’t mean he wanted a hook up with Clint. Plus, Clint had pretty much promised that wasn’t his goal tonight, he wasn’t going to prove himself wrong. Instead, he pulled himself back up into his bunk and crawled under the blankets as if it were no big deal.

A thought struck him as his eyes slid shut, and he opened them again. “Uh, you probably shouldn’t mention that to anyone else. The kind of dicks they lock up in here are pretty much all homophobes.”

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, I figured,” he said. There was a pause and Clint shut his eyes again, although he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to sleep. “Thanks,” added Bucky a moment later, in a quiet voice.

Clint didn’t reply. He pulled his hearing aids out and tucked them back under his pillow, and prepared to lie awake thinking about all the possibilities that had just opened up, and that he’d probably never get to experience.

****

Clint would have assumed that if you were living in the guesthouse of a royal palace, there would be servants all over the place, but that turned out not to be the case. Twice a week a man came in and cleaned the place, but he also spent a lot of time glaring at whoever he thought had created the most mess that week, so it didn’t feel like he was there for them so much as to make sure they weren’t wrecking the joint.

Everything else, they took it in turns to do. Clint was given a week to settle in, but the week after that he found himself on a rota that covered all the main chores, including having to cook dinner for everyone once a week. That would have been a problem for him even back in the US, where he at least recognised everything in the fridge. He tried to point that out, but no one was particularly sympathetic.

“There’s cookbooks in the kitchen,” said Scott. “And, you know, the whole of the internet. I bet you could learn.”

“Even Steve managed to stop boiling everything,” agreed Wanda.

That wasn’t as helpful as she might have thought, because Clint wasn’t even sure he’d trust himself to boil stuff. In desperation, he traded to take an extra turn at the laundry in exchange for Sam helping him out for the first couple of weeks. He liked Sam, the little he knew of him. He seemed like the most sensible guy in the place.

Which wasn’t saying much, because the guy still strapped on a pair of wings and ran around after Captain America, but he was as close to sensible as they were going to get in a house full of fugitive superheroes.

“So,” said Sam, once he’d set Clint to chopping things, which seemed to be the only thing he really trusted him with after the quick rundown of Clint’s culinary experience. “You’re the Winter Soldier’s boyfriend.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Clint. Ah, crap, he’d opened himself up to being interrogated. “I mean, that’s not what I call him in bed or anything…”

Sam made a face. “You know, he once totalled my car,” he said in a pointed tone.

Well, that was awkward. 

“Uh, I don’t think we’re at the stage of sharing each other’s debts,” said Clint, giving him a vague shrug.

“Okay,” said Sam, pulling out a pan and setting it on the stove. “So what stage are you at?”

“Listen, man, I don’t think we’re ever going to be at the stage where I have to buy you a new car,” said Clint.

Sam gave him an unimpressed look. “I just want to find out how romancing goes in prison, especially with the world’s most notorious assassin. Barnes has been a pain in my ass but I figure he could do with some folks showing an interest in his welfare, after everything, and there wasn’t a lot of time for a chat about how he was doing before he ended up in the Raft.”

That was probably fair, and fuck knew Clint would rather go into the details of exactly what he and Bucky had got up to with Sam than Captain America. Even if Steve was becoming a friend, there were still sometimes moments where he did the clenched-jaw disapproving frown and Clint felt like he’d let down the entire concept of justice.

“Okay, fine,” he said, focusing back on the chopping board and maybe using a slightly heavier hand on the knife than was needed. “What do you want to know?”

“What stage are you at?” asked Sam again.

Clint gave a helpless shrug. He and Bucky hadn’t ever really talked about that kind of relationship shit, and most of it wouldn’t exactly have been relevant to their situation anyway. “It’s not really following a normal relationship pattern,” he said. “We were sharing a cell from the moment we met, you know?”

“Right,” agreed Sam. “You and the new guy on the block, the one with the bad history who’s not used to people being nice to him. Probably a bit touch-starved and desperate for affection, right?”

This kind of conversation always made Clint feel so uncomfortable. “Ah, who isn’t?” he said with a shrug and a grin. Sam gave him an unimpressed look and Clint sighed. “Okay, yeah, you could say that,” he said, thinking of the way Bucky had melted back against him when he’d given him that first massage.

Sam nodded. “So, what? You took him under your wing, showed him the ropes, all that?”

“Basically, I guess,” said Clint, not that it had felt like Bucky had needed to be taken under anyone’s wing, not with his reputation. “I mean, it was kinda nice having another guy there who wasn’t basically evil. Or Pietro, who spent most of his time trying to wind me up and just never stopped talking. It was nice just having a guy I could sit quietly with without worrying he was thinking about shanking me, you know?”

“Okay,” said Sam. “That makes sense. He was probably really grateful for that as well. So, exactly how long was it before you turned things physical?”

He was still talking in the same carefully casual tone, but there was something of a sting in the last sentence, one that gave away what he was insinuating. 

Clint carefully set the knife down before he acted rashly. “Not sure how that’s your business.”

Sam turned away from the pot he’d been fiddling with on the stove, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. There was a serious look on his face that Clint wasn’t sure how to react to. “It’s my business because it’s Steve’s business,” he said. “Steve would move heaven and earth for that guy, there’s no one more important to him, and if he finds out you took advantage of him-”

“Fuck off,” said Clint, keeping his voice steady so no one in the other room would hear an angry tone and come join in the accusations that Clint was that kind of abusive asshole. Damn, he wanted to let rip though. Just the very idea that he’d do anything Bucky wasn’t one hundred percent on board with was making him want to start breaking things. “Seriously. Fuck right off. If Steve wants to ask me anything like that, he can damn well ask me himself.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Steve doesn’t know to ask,” he said. “He’s not had a lot of experience with this kinda thing, but I’ve counseled guys who came out of bad situations and jumped in with the first person that was nice to them. I know how easy it was for them to let things go further than they really wanted just because they didn’t want to lose that affection, and boom! They ended up right back in another bad situation. I’ve maybe got a grudge against Barnes for a couple of things, including the car, but I wouldn’t want that to happen to him.”

As angry as the suggestion made Clint, he could get where Sam was coming from. He took a deep breath and told himself he wasn’t about to blow up at him when he was just looking out for Bucky. Bucky could use a few people looking out for him, after all, and Clint could see why Sam might think he needed to ask.

That didn’t mean Clint wasn’t absolutely fucking furious about it, though. 

“That’s not what this is,” he ground out, clenching his fists. “I wasn’t exactly jumping at the idea of getting involved with someone in prison. I was just glad my cellmate wasn’t a complete asshole when Bucky moved in, so him being a good guy I liked hanging out with was just a bonus, and him being hot as hell was just eyecandy. Nothing I was actually going to pursue. And then…” he shrugged again, trying to convey just how helpless he’d felt when he’d realised how deep in messy emotions he’d let himself get. “He kissed me.”

Sam was still giving him a narrow-eyed look, but some of the aggression had faded off his face. “ _He_ kissed _you_?”

“Yep,” said Clint. “No prompting, no manipulation, just…” He hesitated as the emotions wrapped up in the memory of that first kiss tangled up with the others he was already feeling. This was entirely too much for right now, when he was just meant to be making dinner with a guy he didn't know so well. He took a deep breath, then threw on a smirk and flexed his arms. “Guess he couldn’t stand being so close to this gun show and not making a move.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Seriously, man? That’s what you’re going with?”

“It’s that or talk about sticky gooey feelings,” Clint pointed out, “and, no offence, but I don’t know you nearly well enough for that. That’s between me and him. Just, trust me, I wouldn’t have touched him if he hadn’t made the first move, and made it very clear what he wanted.”

“I guess that’s fair,” said Sam, begrudgingly, “but if he gets here and tells a different story…”

Clint shrugged and turned back to the vegetables he was chopping. “Then Captain America will bash my skull in,” he said casually, as if he wasn’t terrified of exactly what Bucky’s reaction would be after the way Clint had skipped out on him. “Still better than being in prison.”

“Jesus,” muttered Sam, “okay.”

“What are we making, anyway?” asked Clint and yeah, okay, maybe it wasn’t subtle, but it turned the conversation off Bucky. 

They talked about other, easier things after that, and Clint pushed his emotions back down and settled into getting to know Sam a bit better while cooking something that he was very aware was only edible because Sam had kept a very close eye on him.

The thing was, he completely got why Sam had felt he had to have that conversation with him. And yeah, it sucked, and he was pissed about it, but not really at Sam. More at the kinds of assholes who would have done exactly what Sam suggested, and made it a conversation that had to be had.

And thank fuck that it had been with Sam, and not Steve. Clint wasn’t sure how he’d have got through that at all.

****

There had been a weird kind of tension in the air of their cell ever since the night Clint had given Bucky a massage. Clint wasn’t sure what to do with it, because there was no way in hell he should be having a relationship with his prison cellmate, not even if he were hot as hell and funny in a dry, dark way that never failed to make Clint snigger.

Not even if Clint was beginning to find himself feeling soft, affectionate things when he saw Bucky half-asleep in his bunk, or curled up around a book with the little frown Clint always wanted to gently press a finger to and see if he could smooth it out.

Clint’s relationships pretty much all ended in disaster, and usually pretty quickly. The last thing he wanted was to be sharing a bunk bed with a pissed off ex. Oh, sure, he managed to pull it back to friendship most of the time, but that usually took some distance first, so that the other person could take a break from him and shed some of their rage. There was no way to get anything like ‘distance’ locked up in this place, not when there wasn’t even a yard for them to escape to.

So, Clint was pretty set on no prison relationships, which also maybe meant no relationships ever again, because unless he could work out the snags in his escape plan, he was going to die down here.

God, that got more depressing every time he thought it.

Bucky hadn’t been sentenced yet, but it seemed like there was a high chance he was going to end up down here for a good few years as well, maybe even decades. It would be better for both of them if they just stuck to being friends who had each other’s backs when the Hydra assholes decided it was time to beat on someone. That was way more sustainable in the long run than messing about with sex and emotions.

None of that rational common sense stopped Clint getting caught on the sharp line of Bucky’s jaw every so often, of course, or having problems pretending not to pay attention when he changed clothes. Fuck, the guy was unbelievably hot.

Things with the Hydra assholes went in cycles. Every so often they tried to get Clint alone to beat him up, forgetting that every time they’d tried that before, Clint had sent at least three or four of them to the hospital wing and escaped himself with only bruises. Well, a lot of bruises, and some fucked up ribs, and a busted ankle that one time, but still. He definitely did enough damage every time for Hydra to back off and glower at him for a few months before they tried again. 

But that had been back when Clint had been the only guy in the place they hated enough to risk time in solitary if it meant they got to hurt him. After Pietro got sent in, looking like a much softer target with his bambi eyes and the suppression cuff highlighting that he couldn’t access his powers right then, they took to trying to beat him up as some kind of retaliation every time Clint sent a handful of them to the hospital.

Pietro wasn’t as good at fighting as Clint, but even with the cuff on he was fast. He was usually able to escape any attempt to corner him and zip straight back to Clint’s side for protection.

The first time the cycle reached that stage after Bucky arrived, he was already fuming over Clint’s black eye and the limp he wasn’t quite able to hide. He seemed to think it was his fault somehow, as if Clint hadn’t been at the top of the shitlist since he stopped being the only one down here.

“I can’t believe the guards just let those assholes get away with it,” Bucky muttered as they sat at one of the tables. They were meant to be playing cards but Bucky was distracted by sending fierce glares at anyone who got within range.

“Everyone involved either ended up in solitary or medical,” said Clint. That had included him, but he’d got out of the medical unit pretty quickly, mostly by lying about exactly how much it all hurt. “Not sure what else you’re expecting them to do. It’s not like there’s a more secure facility for them to be transferred to.”

Bucky just made a vague growling noise. A guy who had been wandering past in the direction of his cell did a neat 180 and disappeared to the other side of the block.

Clint glanced around the room noting just who was there, glaring at him and Bucky from a safe distance or just pretending they had no idea what was going on. It wasn’t like the whole block was out to get them, after all. There was a handful of guys who had nothing to do with Hydra, who had been picked up doing their own thing and didn’t want to be associated with neo-Nazis, and not everyone who had been in Hydra was interested in playing these games, not now they were all locked up together. Some of them just wanted to serve their time and get out.

Some of them had been manipulated into helping Hydra, like Pietro, and clearly wanted to distance themselves from their past as much as possible. Of course, because they hadn’t ended up fighting alongside the Avengers, they weren’t on anyone’s shit list the way Pietro and Clint were.

There were some notable faces missing. The last Hydra asshole had been let out of solitary that morning, which meant…

Fuck. Where was Pietro?

Clint stood up, moving so he could see into Pietro’s cell, but he already knew it was going to be empty. Pietro went to the showers about this time most days, and of course he hadn’t thought to ask either of them to go along with him to watch his back.

“Fuck,” Clint muttered, and headed for the bathrooms as fast as he could without catching anyone’s attention. If the guards thought he was up to something, they’d get distracted by trying to stop him rather than by whatever was probably going on in the bathroom right now.

He heard the sound of fighting as soon as he turned into the bathroom corridor, and sped up into a sprint.

“Oi! Fuckers!” he yelled as he burst into the bathroom, taking the scene in as quickly as he could. 

Pietro was backed up against the showers, not wearing his shirt and being kept from the door by a solid wall of assholes. Apparently they’d finally learnt their lesson on not allowing him an escape route. Pietro was already looking pretty beaten up and the head asshole, Juris, was holding him by the throat, fist pulled back to land a punch. He glanced over his shoulder and grinned with the lip Clint had fattened for him a couple of days ago.

“This is what happens to little bitches,” he growled, and threw the punch right at Pietro’s face.

There was a roar of pure rage that Clint was surprised to realise wasn’t coming from him, and Bucky thundered past him before Clint could get involved. He wasn’t in time to stop the punch landing, but he was able to rip Juris away from Pietro and throw him clean across the room, smashing into the sinks and shattering a mirror.

Clint had heard tales of the Winter Soldier, of course, but he hadn’t really appreciated just how brutal he could be. Bucky didn’t even seem to notice that he was an arm down as he went through the gang, destroying them so badly that half the bathroom got taken out as well. Clint didn’t bother getting involved after the first couple of seconds of awed staring. Instead he ducked around the carnage to where Pietro was collapsed on the ground, blinking up at the ceiling with the kind of confusion that meant a doctor needed to shine bright lights into his eyes.

“Daddy,” he said, when he saw Clint, and patted up at his cheek. “All good, Daddy.”

“Yeah, sure it is, kid,” said Clint, looking over to where Bucky was slamming a guy against the wall hard enough to crack tiles. There was a mindless look of fury on his face right up until he glanced over at Clint and Pietro, and then there was nothing but worry. Clint managed a thumbs up at him just as the guards came rushing in.

The first guard in actually stopped dead in surprise, which Clint could appreciate. The place looked like a battlefield, between the broken fixtures, the collapsed, groaning bodies, and the blood smeared around the place.

“They started it,” he said quickly, trying to get their narrative out before the others had a chance to talk. “They cornered Pietro. I think he has a concussion.”

The guard shook himself, glancing at the others who were arriving. “Get everyone to medical,” he said, then looked at Bucky with something akin to fear. “Except him. He goes straight to solitary.”

For a moment Clint thought Bucky was going to keep fighting then he just...deflated. Like all the rage he’d let out had left him powered down. He slumped, letting them grab his shoulders and hustle him off, just glancing back at Clint and Pietro for a second with misery in his eyes. He glanced at the rest of the room as he went through the door, at the scattered bodies, and Clint saw the exact moment guilt skated across his face and then was covered by a blank mask.

“Other Daddy’s in trouble,” said Pietro, then squeezed his eyes shut. “Aw fuck, should light hurt?”

“Yeah, you’re going to be on 24 hour observation, kid,” said Clint, sitting back as the guards swarmed around them. “Sucks to be you.”

They all got carted off and Clint just let it happen. The head guard came down to speak to everyone who had been involved, but Clint could tell he didn’t much care. They all knew that this same scene was going to keep repeating itself over and over and the only reason they were so pissed this time was because the bathroom had to be shut off for three days to be repaired.

Clint only spent a couple of hours in solitary, which meant he was the first one back on the block. He waited until Connors was on duty, then sidled over and asked some careful questions about Pietro, who had been put on concussion watch like Clint had figured, and Bucky, who Connors refused to talk about.

“I’m just glad he didn’t start swinging for us,” he muttered, then disappeared off to… go do whatever the guards did when they weren’t napping at the security desk.

It took another four days before Bucky turned up again. Pietro got let out of the medical unit before then, just as chirpy and unbowed as he always was after a beating. He made a point of grinning at the Hydra assholes as they slowly turned up back on the block, being let out of solitary or the medical unit. They glowered back, but none of them even came close to making a move, and Clint figured the cycle had reset for now. They had a month or two of peace before the next time Hydra decided to come after Clint and Pietro. Maybe longer if Bucky had made a real impression.

Bucky came back just before the afternoon lock up, looking pale and tired. He flinched at the clang of the cell door and the thump Clint’s feet made as he threw himself off the top bunk to greet him.

“Holy shit, I thought they’d keep you locked up forever,” he said. “Are you okay, you didn’t get hurt right? No, right, of course not, you didn’t really give them a chance for that. Wow, you just took them all out, that was very impressive. Fucking brutal.”

Bucky blinked at him, and let out a grunt that might have been an acknowledgement.

“Only half of them are out of medical so far,” Clint continued. “Pietro’s been out a day or two, he’s fine. Sadly it doesn’t seem like the hit joggled any of his personality loose at all.”

“Clint, stop,” said Bucky, putting a hand on Clint’s shoulder and gently pushing him away, which was when Clint realised he had maybe crowded up a bit close to him. “I just got out of solitary, you are too intense right now.”

“Right, sorry,” said Clint, because he knew what that was like. He stepped back and let Bucky settle down on his bunk, putting his head in his hands, but he could feel the words banking up in his throat, desperate to get out. The guy just looked so worn down and defeated, and Clint wanted to make it better, but it didn’t seem like touching was maybe the best idea right now.

“Look, I just wanted to say, what you did...that was a good thing, okay? Those guys were assholes, and they’d have hurt Pietro far worse if you hadn’t stepped in. They totally deserved it, there’s no need to feel gui-”

Bucky stood up so fast Clint was still blinking when Bucky’s hand closed around his throat, not painfully but just enough to command all of Clint’s attention. As if Bucky hadn’t already had that. “Just shut up for five minutes, would you?” he asked, and there was maybe a strain of desperation in his voice.

“Right, sure, sorry,” said Clint around the grip on his throat and, shit, that shouldn’t be so hot, right? God, Bucky’s face was so close as well, Clint hadn’t seen his eyes from quite this close before. They were beautiful. “Just, don’t blame your-”

He wasn’t even slightly expecting the kiss. He was still trying to talk as Bucky’s mouth descended on his, shutting him up so completely that it drove all the words out of his head as well. 

Bucky pushed him back against the wall and Clint lost track of everything outside of the two of them for several long minutes, just gripping on to the back of Bucky’s shirt and surrendering to his kiss as all the emotions he’d been doing his best to choke down fountained up inside him.

God, fuck all his common sense thoughts about the stupidity of a relationship with his cellmate. He _wanted_ this, he wanted it so badly, he wanted to get to have this one good thing in his life, to be able to kiss Bucky and crawl into his bunk with him and hold him when he was having a bad day and run his hand through his hair… He wanted all of it, as much as Bucky would let him have.

When Bucky eventually pulled back, he didn’t go far. He stayed close, staring at Clint with wide eyes, as if the kiss had been as much a surprise to him as it was to Clint.

“Okay,” said Clint, carefully. “So, that happened.”

“Yeah,” said Bucky hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “Well, I figured if your mouth is occupied you won’t be able to run it.”

Clint nodded against the grip of his hand, still curled around his neck although it felt more like a caress than a threat now. “So I should just keep talking any time I want another one?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, but pressed back in to kiss Clint again and, fuck, this was all Clint wanted and, screw it, he was going to take as much of it as he could.

****

Clint would have thought time would pass quicker outside prison that it did inside, especially when he was living in the grounds of a royal palace with a bunch of superheroes, but the countdown to Bucky being released seemed to go slower and slower as the weeks trickled into months. Clint hadn’t thought it would feel like he’d be waiting long when he’d escaped from the Raft but it was starting to feel like an eternity.

Especially as Clint still had no idea how Bucky was going to react to finding out that Clint had been in Wakanda for months, merrily telling everyone they were dating when...

Shit, what if it _had_ just been a prison fling? What if Bucky didn’t want anything to do with Clint after all this?

Clint told himself firmly that in that case, he’d still at least be free and he could just go and try and find Natasha. Not that he had a hope in hell of actually tracking her down but maybe if she heard he was looking for her, she’d come find him. 

And then he could explain that he hadn’t just abandoned her to retire, but had been in prison, which wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to. Neither of them really liked having that many emotions close to the surface.

Every so often, he let himself spend too long thinking about how Hydra had stolen the last few years from him, and had ripped apart all his friendships while they’d been at it, and he became incandescent with rage, clenching his fists impotently because there was no one to take it out on, not one left to blame who wasn’t either dead or in prison.

None of it seemed to be getting him anywhere, so he just stifled it all back down and threw himself into all the things he hadn’t had a chance to do while locked up instead, trying to distract himself from all the circling dark thoughts. He headed out into the jungle for long walks; he charmed the Dora Milaje into letting him borrow a bow and train with them; he continued to cook with Sam until he sort of maybe knew how to prepare a couple of meals that wouldn’t kill people; and the whole time, he couldn’t help wondering how Bucky would fit into it all when he arrived. Would he go with Clint on his walks? Would he let Clint show him the waterfalls he’d found, or the tree he could climb right to the top of to look out over the whole of the palace grounds? Would he want to train with Clint, or would he be done with anything that reminded him of fighting? Would he enjoy eating Clint’s food, or would he want to cook himself?

Would he let Clint talk about how angry he was at having his life stolen, or would he think that a handful of years in prison were nothing compared to the seventy that Hydra had taken from him?

Rather than dwell on just how easy Clint found it to imagine Bucky slotting into place beside him, Clint started working on creating a space for Bucky to call his own. Steve told Clint about the tiny apartment Bucky had had in Bucharest when he found him, and Clint wanted him to have that again. His own space, with the things he liked around him, where he didn’t have to listen to any orders or follow anyone else’s schedule.

Where he didn’t have to be with Clint if he didn’t want to be. 

Clint’s plans for it started when he was lying on his bed one evening, watching the sun slowly set behind the mountains while he waited for Scott to announce dinner was ready. He was thinking about a conversation he and Bucky had had, late one night in Bucky’s bunk when they were hidden behind the sheet and both half-asleep.

_”Do you remember the last time you saw the sun?” Clint asked, staring up at the dark ceiling. Living in an underwater bunker meant that he occasionally had weirdly vivid flashbacks to sunny days he’d once been out and about in._

_“Oh yeah,” said Bucky. “It was overcast the day they brought me down here, but the day before, when they were transporting me from Germany, that was all blue skies. I watched the clouds through the plane window.”_

_“Clouds,” said Clint, with a soft sigh. He missed clouds._

_“Do you like sunsets or sunrises more?” asked Bucky._

_Clint didn’t need to think about that one. “Sunsets,” he said. “Sunrises happen way too early. I only used to see them on missions, before a very long day or after a very long night.”_

_“I like sunrises,” said Bucky. “I like knowing it’s a new day. I used to watch them from the roof of my apartment building in Bucharest and think about all the things I could do with the day, and how it was my choice which of them I ended up doing.”_

It was moments like that that had made Clint think that maybe it was going to be okay when Bucky arrived, because you didn’t open up and say that kind of thing to a guy you were just fucking because you were locked up together, right?

At the time, it had just about broken Clint’s heart of course, because Bucky had been right back to having no choices over how his day went. 

That would change as soon as he got to Wakanda. Clint was going to make sure he got to make all the choices he wanted to, including whether or not he wanted Clint around, and in what capacity. Just because Clint was still telling anyone who asked that he was Bucky’s boyfriend didn’t make it true.

Clint looked at the sunset one more time, then got up and went to investigate the bedrooms that weren’t yet being used. One of them had to look out to the east, right?

From there, it was easy to set up the rest of the room. It turned out Clint had a pretty good idea of how Bucky would like his bedroom arranged, once he started thinking about it. 

Bucky would want the biggest bed Clint could bargain for with the grumpy palace servant, and he’d want it placed for the best view of the sunrise but also so that if someone tried shooting through the window from outside, the angle would be wrong to hit anyone in the bed. That was just common sense.

Bucky would want as many cushions and pillows as Clint could dig up from around the place, because he deserved a soft place to nest after all the hard, cold places he’d spent time. He’d never really complained about the beds in prison, but Clint had watched him shift about and plump his pillow, adjusting his blankets for long periods every evening, trying to make it cosy and failing. Clint also went through all the linen shops in town until he found the softest sheets he’d ever felt, because he wanted Bucky to be completely comfortable.

Bucky would want a screen by the bed so anyone coming to the door couldn’t see the whole room, and if it made Clint think of the privacy sheet they’d always rigged up before having sex, well, that was his own business. He was setting this room up for Bucky and Bucky alone, with no expectation of being allowed to spend any nights in it.

He found a large bookcase in one of the other bedrooms that just had a couple of decorative knick-knacks on it and moved that into the room he was setting up as well. He dug through the one English-language bookshop in town to find a handful of the old sci-fi classics Steve said Bucky used to read when they were kids, but left most of it empty for Bucky to fill himself. There hadn’t been a proper prison library in the Raft, just a trolley of books that came around once a week. Bucky’s rant about the choice available had become familiar enough that Pietro had joined in with it a couple of times, word perfect, so Clint was pretty sure Bucky was going to want to spend some of his new life reading.

Clint also got hold of a couple of knives with sheaths that he could attach to the back of the nightstand and the underside of the bed, so Bucky would have easy access to them in the night. Clint didn’t think for a second that he’d need them, not when he’d be surrounded by all the high-tech protections of the royal palace, not to mention Captain America and his band of heroes, but he knew Bucky would want something to make him feel safe. They’d come for him in his home before, after all.

Clint was standing in the centre of the room, looking around it with a frown, when Wanda came in carrying two small plants.

“Hydra kept us in stone rooms in the depths of their fortress,” she said. “When I left them, all I wanted was to have life around me. I thought maybe it would be the same for Bucky.”

Clint grinned at her. After their slightly rocky start, he’d found he got on well with her. Certainly, she was far less annoying than Pietro. When Clint had mentioned that to her, she’d given him a very dismissive look. “Of course,” she’d said. “He’s younger than I am.”

“That’s a great idea,” he said, taking the plants from her. “Oh, and maybe a fruit bowl or something as well, something he can snack from whenever he wants. He used to bitch about having to wait for mealtimes.”

Wanda nodded. “Pietro is the same. And Steve,” she added. “Always sticking his head in the fridge and blaming it on his super-soldier metabolism. As if all boys aren’t constantly snacking.”

Clint had been thinking about popping down to the kitchen to grab a sandwich after this, but he decided maybe he’d just wait for dinner.

“Pietro will be leaving prison today,” Wanda added softly. “He’ll be going to whatever halfway house they have arranged for him, letting them believe that his sister does not care enough to come for him, or even get in contact.”

“He knows the truth, though,” said Clint, because he’d heard all the plans being put into place for getting Pietro to Wakanda without alerting the international community to where Steve and the others were hiding out.

“Yes,” she said, quietly. She smoothed a hand over the fluffy red throw Clint had found to drape over the end of the bed, then sat down on it. “He knows I am here, safe and unharmed, while he got shot and then imprisoned.”

“Oh, hey, that’s not your fault though,” said Clint. “I mean, I wasn’t there, but it’s not like you knew that they’d pick Pietro up from the hospital and take him to the Raft.”

She shook her head. “I should have known,” she said. “Just because you have changed your mind and fought on the side of the good guys against your previous master doesn’t mean that all the crimes you committed are just forgotten. That’s not how any legal system works.”

“No,” agreed Clint, “but I feel like they could have taken the whole coercion thing into account a bit more. Like they did with Bucky.”

She pressed her lips together and gave him one of her unsettling perceptive looks. “Like they didn’t with you?”

Clint just shrugged, picking up one of the plants and turning away to set it on the windowsill because it would need light, and not at all because he wanted to hide his face. He wasn’t interested in getting into the circumstances of his imprisonment just yet.

Or maybe ever, really. 

He nudged the plant a couple of inches over, and then back again, until he was sure it was in the very centre of the windowsill.

“Did Pietro ever talk about me?” Wanda asked after the pause had stretched on for a while.

“His crazy powerful twin sister that he spent his whole life with?” asked Clint, turning around again. “Sure, I think you came up once or twice.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I meant…” She hesitated, then asked, “Did he ever talk about how he was in prison and I wasn’t?”

“Not really,” said Clint, picking the other plant up and wondering if the top of the bookcase would get enough light. How much light was enough? God, he hoped Bucky was better at growing things than Clint was.

“Nothing at all?” she pressed.

Clint paused to actually think about it. Most of what had come out of Pietro’s mouth had been utter rubbish structured around the next bad joke, but there had been a couple of times when he’d opened up a bit more. “He once said he was glad you weren’t locked up, because if at least one of the Maximoffs were free then it was like both of you were, because that was what being twins meant.”

“Oh,” she said in a low voice, ducking her head. “Oh, that idiot.” To Clint’s horror she sounded close to tears and for a moment he considered diving out of the window to escape the emotions. He pulled himself together though, setting the plant down again so he could go and sit next to her on the end of the bed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “Whatever you’re worried about him thinking, I can promise you he’s not. He was happy you were still free and that he’d get to see you again.”

She burst completely into tears at that and turned to press her face into Clint’s shoulder. “That _idiot_ ,” she said again, between sobs. “He shouldn’t... I _abandoned_ him. He should hate me.”

“It wouldn’t have helped much if you’d got locked up as well,” said Clint. “You wouldn’t even have been in the same block, you’d have been in the women’s wing. You’d still have been apart.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I froze up. In Sokovia, when Ultron was attacking. I got overwhelmed and I hid. There was just so much going on, the robots and the city was flying and all of it. Pietro just threw himself right in, but I freaked out. I got it together after about ten minutes, but that was enough. He was on the other side of the city by then so he didn’t have me at his back when he got injured.”

Clint took a moment just to stroke her back and consider how to respond to that. “There’s no shame in being scared,” he said. “And from all accounts, that situation was enough to freak anyone out. You were still a kid back then, whatever else you’d already been through. It makes sense that you need time to get your head around it all.”

She shook her head. “No one else needed that,” she said, bitterly.

“No, I reckon they all did, one way or another,” said Clint. “It just came earlier than Sokovia. Look, being an Avenger’s a weird thing, right? I might only have been one for a day, but I remember that much. And before…” 

He had to pause and clear his throat, because he hadn’t been expecting to talk about this today and didn’t have all his walls in place to be able to act like he was over it. It seemed like Wanda needed to hear it, though. 

“Before the Battle of New York, there was a moment when I coulda ducked out on the whole thing. Steve came to Natasha asking about a pilot while I was recovering from…” he waved a vague hand in the air, not wanting to go too deeply into it all, “everything with Loki, and a thump to the head as well. There was a moment when I could have just kept my mouth shut and sat the whole thing out, and I was really tempted by it. Like, unbelievably tempted. I stayed quiet while they talked and let myself be freaked out. But when it came to it, I couldn’t do that. Just like you couldn’t stay hidden away in Sokovia. We both made the choice to take on being an Avenger, because someone needed to do the job and we were best placed. That’s the same for everyone else on the team and I bet if you asked them, they’d all be able to tell you about their own moment of doubt before they stepped up.”

He considered that, then added, “Maybe not Steve, but we really shouldn’t be judging ourselves based on Captain America’s standards. But I bet Pietro did, he probably just processed it a thousand times faster than the rest of us.” He gave Wanda’s shoulders a gentle squeeze. “He’ll understand. And there’s no way in hell he’ll ever blame you.”

She let out a shuddering breath, curling over herself. “I hope so,” she said. “God, I hope so.”

“What happened to Pietro isn’t your fault,” Clint repeated. “These things happen. Even if you hadn’t taken those ten minutes to get your head around it all, who knows what would have happened? You might still have been on the other side of the city, or doing something you couldn’t set aside to help him. Battles are messy, complicated things, and trying to second-guess them is a fool’s game.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “That’s true.” She took another deep breath, this time stiffening her shoulders and sitting back up. “Thank you.”

He let his arm fall from around her shoulder as he shrugged. “No worries. You know Pietro’s going to be too over-excited about having a jungle to run around in to worry about what happened years ago, anyway. He’s going to freak out all the local wildlife.”

She laughed and Clint was pleased to see that she looked a lot more relaxed. “Oh yes. He will have explored the whole jungle within a week of getting here.”

“Exactly,” said Clint. Now he was looking at the plant on the bookcase, he was realising it wasn’t in a place where it could catch the morning sun. He got up to move it, picking it up and glancing around the room at the available choices. “He’s not the kind to hold that kind of grudge,” he added.

“No,” she said softly, smiling to himself. “He holds on to shitty jokes for too long, but anger not at all.”

Clint decided the windowsill had space for both plants and that Bucky could always move them if he wanted them more spread out in the room. He set the plant down next to the other one, nudging it over so they were still in the centre.

“I do not know your Bucky very well,” said Wanda, “but I think he is the same.”

“What?” asked Clint, turning around and trying not to react to the idea of Bucky being ‘his’.

She gave him a knowing look and then a pointed glance around the room. “You’re worried he’ll be angry with you when he arrives. I don’t think you need to be. He’ll just be happy to be back with you, and in better circumstances than in prison.”

Clint wasn't so sure about that but he wasn’t about to get into this with her, so he just pinned on a smile and said, “I hope so.”

“He will definitely appreciate the effort you have made to set this room up,” she added. “It’s lovely.”

Clint looked around at it again. “I hope so,” he said. “It feels like he deserves to finally have a place he can call his own, you know?”

“That’s important to have,” agreed Wanda. “It’s also nice to see that someone cares enough to create that for you.”

Clint just shrugged because he didn’t know how to talk about the messy ball of feelings he had about Bucky. Creating a room for him had kept him distracted from lingering on any of it for too long during the day, but he still found himself lying awake at night, flitting between guilt, hope, and the horrible, gut-sinking feeling that he’d already got far too attached to the guy and wasn’t ever going to be properly okay again if Bucky did choose not to continue their prison fling on the outside.

“Steve and T’Challa are really the ones giving him that,” he said instead. “I’m just sorting out a couple of cosmetic details.”

The smile she gave him was far too knowing. “Of course,” she agreed, sounding amused.

Clint looked away again, and nudged one of the plants over another couple of inches.

****

Clint finished Bucky’s room a week before he was due to arrive in Wakanda, which meant he had nothing to focus his nervous energy on for the final few days. He started spending hours every day at the Dora Milaje’s archery range, taking himself off for runs through the jungle every evening once the temperature had cooled enough for exercise, and even sparring with whoever he could get to agree to it. Getting his ass soundly kicked by Captain America for a couple of hours was just about the only way he could find to tire himself out enough to get some sleep without just lying awake thinking about how Bucky was going to react to his presence.

He woke up before dawn on the day Bucky was due to be transferred to Wakanda and didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep. He was in the kitchen making coffee when Steve wandered in, looking just as amped up as Clint felt.

Clint poured a second mug and they went out to the porch to drink them together, quietly watching the sun come up.

“He’s not even due to get here until this afternoon,” said Steve, eventually.

“I know,” said Clint, shifting restlessly in his chair. “What the hell are we going to do until then?”

Steve just shook his head, looking as lost as Clint felt. “Sit around freaking out?” he suggested.

Yeah, that seemed pretty likely. Clint let out a long sigh. “Man, he’s going to be so mad at me,” he muttered quietly.

Not quietly enough to hide it from supersoldier ears. 

“You’ll be okay,” Steve said. “Bucky was never able to stay mad at the people he cared about, not for long. He’s just going to be pleased to see his boyfriend again.”

And there was that word again. ‘Boyfriend’. Clint had probably got too used to it as a description of him and Bucky. God, what the hell was Bucky going to say when he arrived and found out Clint had made friends with all these people on the basis of what was almost certainly an exaggeration of their relationship?

They’d only once actually talked about what they were doing after they’d started fucking, and it hadn’t been the most enlightening conversation when it came to working out exactly how Bucky had thought about it. Clint had probably built their quiet moments together into far more than they were.

“I hope so,” he said for now, because he didn't want to get a jumpstart on Captain America being mad at him for lying about his relationship with his best friend. They could get into that once Bucky had turned up and Clint had found out how he was going to react.

No. No, it would be fine. Clint wouldn’t have risked all this if it hadn’t felt like there was enough between him and Bucky to believe that it would work out. Bucky would be pissed, sure, but he’d get over it and he’d let Clint make it up to him. He’d want to carry on what they’d been doing.

Clint had to keep believing that. He was going to get the happy ending he’d been hoping for when he’d decided on this plan. He clenched his hands tighter around his coffee mug and did his best to feel like that was true.

“I just want him to finally get a chance to build a life on his own terms,” said Steve. “I hope he doesn’t mind so much that it’s in Wakanda.”

“He always sounded excited when he talked about coming out here,” said Clint. “I think he’s just going to be happy to be with friends, somewhere Hydra can’t touch him.”

“Yeah,” agreed Steve, smiling quietly to himself.

“Plus, you know he’s going to love all the epic tech here,” added Clint. “He was always going on about flying cars and that kinda thing. Those aircraft they have here are pretty much as close as you can get to that.”

“Yeah,” agreed Steve, and his smile widened. “This place definitely feels the most like the future all those sci-fi books of his used to talk about.”

“There you go, then,” said Clint, like it would be just that simple to make Bucky happy.

Maybe it would be. He took a deep breath as a surge of hope hit him. Just a few more hours, and then he’d know for sure, either way.

****

Bucky and Clint had had sex immediately after their first kiss, which was pretty much par for the course for Clint. He didn’t really see the point in going slow with these things when he could just dive right in and find out how badly he was going to fuck it up as soon as possible.

Okay, so he’d never done this with a prison cellmate before, but he figured the basic idea was the same. If he was going to risk the inevitable mess of fucking around with a guy he spent all but six hours a day locked up with, then he might as well just go for it. There was no point in kissing now and then waiting a week before fucking.

Bucky seemed to be thinking the same thing, if the way he’d eagerly pulled Clint into his bunk (after they’d hung up Clint’s sheet in a weak attempt at privacy, of course) was anything to go by.

Fucking in a narrow bunk while trying to keep the noise down as much as possible shouldn’t have been the most satisfying thing, but afterwards, as they lay draped around each other catching their breath, Clint felt pretty damn happy about it all. Who knew the Winter Soldier had moves like that? Wow.

“So, uh,” said Bucky, sliding his hand down Clint’s chest to his stomach and then just letting it rest there, “are we going to be doing this again, or was that just a one-off?”

The fact that he was even asking made it pretty clear which way he wanted it to go, so Clint grinned at him without letting himself second guess it. “I’m pretty happy for it to become a thing.”

Bucky snorted with amusement. “A ‘thing’,” he repeated. “Sure, okay. Let’s have a thing, then.” He leaned in and kissed Clint, gentle and unhurried, unlike all their other kisses so far. Clint felt himself melt into it, bring a hand up to stroke through Bucky’s hair. Yeah. A ‘thing’ sounded good.

****

Bucky was brought to Wakanda on a US Airforce transport plane. T’Challa had arranged for it to land at what Clint quickly realised was a decoy palace, designed for international visitors to be taken to. It was far enough from any cities or towns for the true level of Wakanda’s technology to be kept a secret and the palace itself looked rather rustic to Clint’s eyes after a couple of months in the real thing.

Clint, Steve and Sam went with T’Challa to meet Bucky but they stayed hidden inside one of the buildings as the plane landed on the strip at the back of the palace. A squad of soldiers emerged from the plane first, along with some guy in a suit. Clint assumed he was in charge of the American side of jumping through all the diplomatic hoops that extraditing the Winter Soldier involved.

T’Challa had a squad of Dora Milaje surrounding him as normal, all carrying their spears, but there was also a handful of male soldiers holding AK-47s, which Clint hadn’t seen anyone in Wakanda with before. He had a feeling they were another part of the charade, given that Wakanda had the kind of weaponry that made AK-47s look obsolete.

It took ten minutes for T’Challa and the man in the suit to finish talking, by which time Clint was twitching with impatience and Steve looked about ready to just march out there and go get Bucky off the plane himself. Sam had set his hand on Steve’s shoulder in an unsubtle gesture to keep him in place but Clint wasn’t sure how long that was going to work.

Eventually, the man handed a set of keys over to one of the Dora Milaje then gestured back at the US soldiers. A few moments later, Bucky appeared in the doorway of the plane, flanked by four more soldiers and all chained up like a serial killer.

“Jesus,” muttered Steve, shifting his weight on his feet.

“Not long now,” said Sam, tightening his grip on Steve’s shoulder.

Two of the Wakandan soldiers came up to stand either side of Bucky, T’Challa exchanged some last sentences with the diplomat, then all the Americans got back on their plane. The Wakandans marched back out of the way of the runway, keeping Bucky in the middle of them, and then the Americans finally took off.

The second the plane was high enough up not to be able to see what was happening on the ground, Steve started moving. He sprinted out of the building and across the yard to where Bucky’s chains were already being unlocked. Sam glanced at Clint, who gave him a smile that he hoped looked more solid than it felt.

“I’ll be there in a sec,” he said.

Sam nodded and followed after Steve, and Clint paused to take a deep breath. Okay, this was it. Time to go face the music.

Bucky was so completely focused on Steve that Clint was able to get close enough to hear what Steve was saying without being spotted. God, just seeing his face again felt like the first breath of fresh air Clint had had in years. The way his eyes were lit up, the way the sunlight glinted off his hair, pulling out reddish tones he hadn’t realised were there, the warm glow of his skin; Clint could get used to seeing that every day for the rest of his life.

God, he hoped Bucky would give him the chance to.

“I’m not the only one who has been waiting for you,” Steve was saying. “Just, Bucky. Don't get too mad at him.”

“At who?” asked Bucky, and Clint took his cue to step forward until Bucky glanced over at him. Clint gave him an awkward wave.

Bucky just gaped at him in surprise for a moment and Clint had a few seconds of thinking maybe this would go okay before Bucky’s face turned furious instead. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?!” he asked, striding over to Clint like he was planning a murder.

Clint hastily skipped back a few steps, trying to give himself a chance to explain before he got taken out by an angry assassin. “Don’t be mad!” he said. “I came here to wait for you.”

“Don’t be mad?” repeated Bucky. “Of course I’m fucking mad! You left without even a fucking goodbye!” Shit, Clint really had misjudged this. “Get here, I’m going to-”

“Maybe don’t have this fight right in front of a king?” Sam said, exasperatedly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said T’Challa, grinning. “It is rather entertaining.”

Bucky stopped at that, looking around at the amused looks of the Wakandans for a moment. It figured Clint would be involved in yet another scene that was making them all snigger at him.

“Fuck it,” Bucky snarled. “I get to do some yelling after what this prick did.” He took another couple of strides towards Clint.

Clint skipped away another few paces, wondering how far he could keep backing up before he came up against a wall. “I couldn’t tell you what I was planning. I didn’t want you to get in trouble for knowing anything,” he tried.

It didn’t calm Bucky down at all. “Fuck you, I got in trouble anyway! They threw me in solitary for two days!”

Clint winced. “Ah shit, sorry man.”

“I’ll show you fucking sorry,” muttered Bucky, clenching his hand into a fist.

Sam glanced over at Steve. “I thought these two liked each other?”

“Me too,” said Steve thoughtfully. “Maybe this is how they show affection in jail?”

Both Clint and Bucky ignored them.

“I trusted you, you piece of shit,” Bucky snapped at Clint and, okay, that one hurt. “And you just left.”

“I’m here now,” said Clint. “I’m here because this is where you were coming.” That made Bucky pause and some of the anger fell off his face, so Clint followed up on it. “You know what my sentence was,” he added. “Escaping was the only way for me to get out, to get here. To be with you for more than a couple of months while we were both locked up.”

Bucky took a deep breath, then rubbed his hand over his face. “Fuck,” he muttered. When he looked back at Clint, he was more tired than angry. “You’re an asshole.”

“I know,” said Clint, helplessly, “but this was the only way I could see for this to work.”

Bucky tipped his head back, squeezing his eyes shut as he angled his face to the sky. Clint stayed very still, letting him work through the moment in his head. When Bucky lowered his head again to look at him, he was a lot more relaxed.

“You’re an asshole,” he said again, then stepped in close and pulled Clint’s head down into a kiss.

Clint grabbed hold of him, kissing him back like he was drowning. Oh fuck, he was going to get this. It was all going to work out just how he’d wanted.

****

Given how shitty the food had been in prison, Clint, Bucky and Pietro had all spent many mealtimes reminiscing about food together, so Clint had found it pretty easy to work out exactly what Bucky’s first dinner in Wakanda should be. Because it was his mom’s meatloaf, it had been harder to arrange, but between Steve’s memories and Clint’s research into 1930s meatloaf recipes, he’d eventually come up with something that seemed like it should be close enough.

He’d intended to make it himself but Wanda had taken the recipe out of his hands and reminded him of the three times he’d tried to cook without supervision, and how they’d ended up having takeout every single time. That probably worked out for the best, because it meant when they got back from picking Bucky up, dinner was already being made.

“Meatloaf,” said Bucky, taking in a deep breath of the rich smell, and his face lit up. 

“With potatoes,” added Clint.

Bucky turned his smile on him, taking his hand. “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered,” said Clint, squeezing his hand in return. “You only talked about it every dinner time.”

Bucky snorted. “Only because you started on about pizza and I needed to change the subject.”

“Oh, pizza,” said Clint, with a sigh. “Wakanda just doesn’t have the really cheap, greasy kind that I’d been looking forward to.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Bucky in a grave voice. Clint just rolled his eyes at him.

“Come on, Bucky, let us show you your room,” said Steve. “You’ve got your own bathroom if you want to wash up.”

Bucky’s face lit up. “Oh my god, that sounds awesome.”

Clint grinned back at him. “No assholes heckling you from outside the cubicle if you spend longer than two minutes in there,” he said, because he’d felt the same way when he first got here.

He didn’t want to let Bucky out of his sight right now but he was all too aware that Steve and Bucky probably had just as much, if not more, to catch up on than Clint and Bucky did. Seventy years was a long time apart, after all, and the couple of days they’d had before Bucky was arrested wouldn’t have come close to giving them enough time to catch up, not when they also had to worry about being on the run from everyone.

“You guys go ahead,” he said, sliding his hand out of Bucky’s. “I’m gonna check on dinner.”

Bucky gave him a faint frown, but Clint just grinned back, then escaped into the kitchen, where Wanda made it very clear he wasn’t allowed to touch anything or get within three feet of the stove.

****

Bucky did have a shower and he also changed clothes into some of the spare ones Clint had put in his closet until he had a chance to buy his own, which meant that when he came back downstairs, Clint nearly swallowed his tongue. Holy shit, the guy had been hot in prison clothes, why had Clint not prepared himself for how he’d look in jeans and a shirt? A tight shirt, wow, he must have spent a lot of time working out after Clint escaped. His muscles were filling out every part of his outfit.

For a breathless moment Clint was a little concerned he was just going to melt into a breathless puddle of lust, or fall to his knees and just start worshipping Bucky’s thighs, or something else that would be really awkward in front of the rest of the household.

“Hey,” he managed, faintly, and Bucky grinned at him. Oh shit, that wide, breath-taking grin on his face was almost too much to cope with on top of the rest of it.

“Steve said I have you to thank for setting the room up for me,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Clint, still staring at the seams straining over Bucky’s shoulders. “Well, other people helped.”

Bucky reached out for his hand again, and Clint just let him take it, too caught up on how soft and glossy Bucky’s hair looked. Damn, asking Wanda what shampoo he should stock Bucky’s bathroom with had been the best idea, because it had sure never looked so good when he’d been using prison soap to wash it.

“Thanks, man,” said Bucky, and Clint managed a smile in response. “Hey, uh, could we have a quick chat?”

That didn’t sound good, even if Bucky was still holding Clint’s hand gently in his own.

“Oh, uh, I’m not sure there’s time before dinner,” said Clint, glancing over his shoulder at Wanda.

“There are still fifteen minutes,” said Wanda, the traitor.

“Great,” said Bucky, turning to Clint. “Show me the garden?”

Clint let out a sigh, resigning himself to not even getting to have one dinner before his momentary happiness got ripped away again. “It’s not really a garden so much as a massive estate attached to a royal palace,” he said, “but sure, I’ll show you the closest bits.”

He took Bucky outside, where the sun was setting in an eruption of oranges and pinks, reflecting off the handful of thin clouds that straggled across the sky. It was just the kind of view that Clint had thought he’d never get to see again while he was inside, but he couldn’t spare more than a glance at it now, not when Bucky was beside him and staring at the sky with a raptured expression that Clint wanted to imprint on his memory.

“Fuck, that’s gorgeous,” said Bucky. “Jesus, I missed the sky.”

“Yeah,” said Clint, “I know how that goes.”

Bucky turned away from the sky and wrapped his arm around Clint’s waist, pulling him in close but not kissing him. “Are you sure you’re okay trying this now we’re not in jail?”

Okay, that didn’t sound like he was about to let Clint down gently. “Of course,” said Clint, closing the distance between their mouths with a soft kiss of relief. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well,” said Bucky, “Steve said you set that room up for me, with all the stuff you thought I’d like.”

“If you don’t like any of it, I won’t get upset about you changing it,” said Clint, because he hadn’t wanted to trap Bucky in what he thought he’d like.

Bucky shook his head, “No, it’s great. It’s pretty much perfect, actually, I hadn’t realised how much attention you were paying to the shit I said and did.” 

Clint gave an awkward shrug, even if he was quietly glowing that he’d got it right. “Not much else to pay attention to in that place.”

“Right,” agreed Bucky. “That’s why- I get we were in prison and there weren’t a lot of options. If you just want to be friends now we’re out-”

“No,” said Clint. “Nope, definitely not. Why would I?” He hesitated, then added, “I’ve introduced myself as your boyfriend to half the population of Wakanda, as well as Steve and all his friends. I’m not real interested in making a liar of myself.”

Bucky’s face lit up, and he leaned in to kiss Clint. “Okay, boyfriend. I like the sound of that.”

Clint grinned at him, draping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and relaxing into him. “Cool.”

“But, uh, can I ask then why you set up basically the perfect space for me, but didn’t include yourself in it?” asked Bucky. “Why aren’t we sharing a room? That bed is more than big enough for both of us. And maybe a few others, but I’m not real interested in an orgy right now.”

In all the planning Clint had done for when Bucky got to Wakanda, he hadn’t once stopped to think that they might share a room. Even in the best hypothetical situation he’d come up with while lying awake at night, planning it all out, they’d had their own rooms and Clint had just spent pretty much every night in Bucky’s. It had made sense to him that Bucky would want his own space after everything, not to mention that Clint couldn’t think of a single time that anyone had wanted to live that close to him.

He just stared at Bucky, not sure how to answer, until the silence grew long enough that he could feel Bucky starting to tense up. “I just,” he said, then shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t think you’d want to have someone all up in your space like that.”

Bucky snorted. “They didn’t move anyone into the cell after you’d gone,” he said. “I don’t know if they were assuming you’d be recaptured and would need the bed again, or they didn’t think anyone else would be a good idea to put in with me, but I had the place to myself right up until they shipped me out this morning. I’ve had plenty of time in my own space and you know what? All I used to do was lie awake missing your snoring, and the way you’d leave socks lying about, and how you’d crawl into my bunk after I had a nightmare.” He kissed Clint again, then pulled away less than an inch to add, “I missed you.”

“Oh,” said Clint in a voice that wobbled in the middle. “Okay. Uh. Well, I’d be happy to move into your room if you want.”

“I really do want,” said Bucky and kissed him again, long and slow. Clint just held on and let him, closing his eyes so that Bucky was the only thing he could feel, warm and solid under his hands.

When they finally pulled apart, Clint beamed at him. “Guess we’re going to live together then,” he said. “Wow, this is the most serious relationship I’ve ever had.”

That made Bucky snort a laugh. “Me too, I guess, “ he said, grinning back. “So this is what after looks like, then?”

“Yeah,” agreed Clint. “No more jail, no more Hydra, no more shitty food. Just us and the sky.”

“And a bunch of fugitive Avengers, and all the residents of the Wakandan royal palace,” Bucky pointed out, but he glanced back up at the sky, at the sun setting over the mountains, and his smile turned quietly pleased. “You know, I think I get why you like sunsets,” he said. “It’s nice knowing I’ve reached the end of a day and I’m exactly where I want to be.”

Clint snorted. “Figures you’d realise that after I set you up a room where you can watch the sunrise every morning.”

Bucky grinned and kissed him again, as if he couldn’t resist. Clint was really starting to enjoy getting to just kiss him without having to worry about guards or other inmates seeing them. “I’ll like that too,” he said. “Watching a day begin and knowing I get to spend it with you.”

“Sounds great,” said Clint, “but just so you know, if you try and wake me up to watch with you, I will stab you.”

Bucky nodded. “Seems fair.”

“Hey! Lovebirds! Dinner’s ready!” called Sam from the house, and they headed inside, arms still looped around each other’s waists.


End file.
